The Hostage Major, Part One--by Frostfire
“So that’s it, then? You and Mom are broke-hell, Dad, you
could go to jail. What were you
thinking?” John had started the conversation at polite attention, but the-okay,
not really surprise-at learning that his father had been a total and complete moron had driven him into a frustrated
pace. Northeast corner, detour around the couch, northwest corner. Northwest
corner, pass the window, southwest corner. Southwest corner-
“I wasn’t thinking, all right? We needed money. After awhile, I was starting to think that we might actually get rich-”
“Dad,” John said, speaking in slow, precise tones. “You were embezzling money. That is against the law. It is dangerous. And-oh yeah. Wrong.”
His dad spread his hands. “Johnny, I wish I could say I hadn’t done it. But this is the situation. I don’t think McKay’s going to press charges-he’s never really been much for entirely legal proceedings, himself-but he’s a ruthless bastard. We’re going to be absolutely ruined.”
Northwest corner, pass the window-“Dad, I don’t know what I can do. I mean, you know I’ll do what I can for you, but my salary isn’t-”
“No, Johnny, I know. That isn’t what I’m asking.”
John stopped pacing, looked his dad in the face. That was the look that came right before Mr. Sheppard Senior did something that he knew was totally low. It was pasted on over a frighteningly defeated air-none of his dad’s scams had ever backfired quite this badly.
He was so going to hate this. “What do you want, Dad?”
His dad sighed. “Trixie Venables has been sniffing around you again.”
“Dad.” He really shouldn’t have been horrified. He really shouldn’t-“Dad, I can’t-”
“She’s a billionaire, John. At least. And she wants you, you know that. I’m not just suggesting this for me. You’d be set for life. You’d never have to worry about money again.”
“I don’t really worry about money now. Dad, Jesus Christ, this is medieval.”
His dad shrugged. “I can’t force you to do it, John. I can only ask you. And-you know the consequences, if you don’t.”
“Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” John turned and started out of the room. Left-right-left-right, and he didn’t think about what it might do to his family that he’d said no. He didn’t.
~~~
His mom was the one who managed it, finally.
“Okay, okay! I’ll-Jesus. I’ll take her out on one date, all right? We’ll go to dinner or something. But I’m still not going to marry her this weekend.”
His mother smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Thank you, John. Thank you.”
Jesus.
So he called Trixie, suffered through fifteen minutes of her waffling about which restaurant to choose and not-so-tactfully offering to pay for dinner. A gentleman would maybe have said no way, but John was being forced into gold-digging, here, so he just said sure a lot, and agreed to pick her up at eight on Friday.
He was praying for a miracle cancellation of his leave on Thursday, but no such luck, so he pulled up outside her house at seven fifty-five, parking right in front of a blue Saturn that wasn’t nearly expensive enough for the neighborhood. There ensued fifteen minutes of waiting for her to actually be ready, although honestly, he really couldn’t tell the difference between the way she looked when she opened the door and the way she looked when she finally closed it behind them.
He did have to admit that both of those looks were pretty good, though. She had this great curly dark hair, thick and long and perfectly styled, and the dress she was wearing showed off a really excellent body.
No way was he marrying her. But looking at her for an evening wasn’t going to be too much of a hardship.
The date itself wasn’t totally excruciating, if only because he discovered that Trixie either liked football, or had learned to pretend to in order to keep her dates amused. That killed most of the main course, although the appetizers and dessert were taken over by Trixie talking about…something.
John knew he was being kind of an asshole about this. The woman genuinely liked him, apparently-but, Jesus Christ. He could still barely believe he was actually doing this.
But…well. He didn’t want to let his parents be thrown out into the street to starve.
But he couldn’t just marry her, for Christ’s sake.
He couldn’t.
No way.
~~~
On the way back to Trixie’s, John looked out his rearview mirror and thought, hey, didn’t I see that blue Saturn behind us on the way to the restaurant? but then they reached her house and he was too busy thinking what if she invites me in? to concentrate on that anymore.
Fortunately, she didn’t. She smiled at him, lipstick still perfect, and said, “I had a great time tonight, John,” and leaned in and kissed him.
He kissed her back, because it seemed like the nice thing to do, and he had to admit that she felt good, and when she opened her mouth, tasted even better.
She pulled away, smiled at him, and said, “I’ll call you,” then went inside.
Yeah, he was a total asshole.
~~~
He hadn’t given his parents the hotel room number, thank God, so they couldn’t call him up and ask how the date had gone. Trixie did have it, though, and Saturday, she called him up and said she had tickets to the game on Sunday.
Football was football. And she really could say some intelligent things about it.
~~~
Two dates later-in the space of four days, although he did have to admit that, considering his leave only lasted another week, she had to move fast-he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Trixie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I really need to tell you. I’m not just dating you because I like you.”
But she just smiled and said, “I know about your family’s money problems, John. Don’t worry. I’m just seeing this as an opportunity for us to get to know each other better, now that we have a reason to be together.”
Oh.
That day, they were at her house, curled up on the couch watching TV. John had found, now that avoiding his parents had become something of a mission, he really didn’t have all that much to do, so when Trixie called, he was getting more inclined to say yes.
This was getting-weird. Or serious. Or something. He rested his chin on her hair and stared out the window. After a second of, hey, haven’t I seen that blue Saturn before? he was about to say something, but then Trixie lifted her head and kissed him. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. You do like me, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he said-but he still wasn’t really sure. Okay, she was hot and she knew what a first down was, but did he really know her well enough to like her? They’d only been dating for what, less than a week? And he knew what about her, exactly?
“See? No problem.” And she kissed him again, and maybe he wasn’t sure if he liked her or not, but she still tasted really good.
~~~
He noticed the blue Saturn again on his way home, and finally pulled his head out of his ass and thought, these people are following me. What the hell is going on here?
But then it turned out to be too late, because the second he stepped out of his car at the hotel, the blue Saturn pulled up next to him and two big guys stepped out, and he felt a little sting on the side of his neck, and then it was all dark.
~~~
When he woke up, he felt like total shit, but he forced his eyes open anyway and blinked at the large-no, huge-bedroom around him. He’d never had a reason to use the word sumptuous before-even Trixie was really tasteful about being rich-but this, this was it, right here. Velvet curtains and statuary and famous paintings on the walls-where the fuck was he? A European castle?
The total-shit feeling didn’t really fade, but he pushed the covers back and started working on getting up. He figured out that the sheets were silk about halfway there, followed by a sudden sliding sensation, after which he was not so much up as down.
At least he was out of the bed.
He levered himself to his feet using the nightstand, breathed deeply for a second, and looked down. Boxers. First order of business: get dressed.
Second order of business included finding a gun and pointing it at whoever had brought him here, but John believed in taking one thing at a time. Clothes first, then violence. He took some unsteady steps toward the carved some-kind-of-expensive-wood closet, and opened it.
Clothes. Score.
But then he tried some on, and it became less score and more what the fuck? because they were all exactly his size. And they were all expensive. That was…creepy.
On the plus side, the aftereffects of whatever drug he’d been given were fading, slowly. By the time he’d pulled on the most understated outfit he could find (black pants, dark blue shirt, and he didn’t even want to know what they were made of) he could move around without feeling like he was going to throw up or pass out if he took a step too fast.
Great. Ready for step two. He tried the door.
It was locked. Damn, but not that big of a surprise. He looked around the rest of the room-one other door, leading to a bathroom, no way out from there; one window, also locked, and four stories up, not helpful until he got desperate and was willing to try and climb around the side of a building. He went back to the door. Very sturdy. The lock was-electronic?
Yep. The handle was this old-fashioned-looking curly wooden thing, but the lock itself was a plate of metal. Not helpful. Looked like it was going to be the window after all.
But the window was also electronically locked-goddammit, why didn’t he know how to bypass these things?-and absolutely refused to break, even when John picked up the spindly chair at the dressing table (Jesus Christ, a dressing table? Where the hell was he?) and attacked it.
The chair didn’t break, either.
This was just weird.
~~~
After way too long-there weren’t any clocks in the room, which, in John’s opinion, was better than Chinese water torture for driving a prisoner insane-the door opened.
“Huh,” said the guy standing there. “You know, I thought you’d be bigger?”
John sat up on the bed and took a second to process.
“I suppose I’m stereotyping, but to me, an Air Force major just suggests more…mass,” the guy continued, stepping in and shutting the door behind him. “Maybe you should be working out more. How are you feeling?”
John blinked his way back to reality. Unfortunately, reality was about the same as where he’d been a second ago. “Like crap,” he said, because it was true. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention? Dr. Rodney McKay. Nice to meet you.”
Oh. This suddenly-made even less sense. “You kidnapped me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. No other options, really.” McKay picked up a little figurine from a shelf, frowned at it for a second, and put it back. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you or anything.”
For just a second, John wished that his dreams were more vivid, so he could pretend this was one. Instead, he took a deep breath. Calm. “Why am I here?”
McKay blinked at him. “Because of the thing, of course.”
“The…”
“Thing, thing. The wedding. To what’s-her-name. Trina, Trillian-”
“Trixie,” said John. “You kidnapped me because you think I’m going to marry Trixie.” He really wanted to wake up now.
“Because I know that you were going to marry Trixie, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s only till your leave’s over. Then I can probably talk to some people and get you stationed elsewhere, but this was the only easy way to do it now. She was working her way up to a quick justice-of-the-peace deal before you left, I hope you realize.”
John didn’t say that’s ridiculous, because it always sounded pathetic in the movies. “I think you might be overreacting just a little,” he tried instead.
“I think you might be too busy saluting and looking in the mirror to recognize a vulture when you see one, but whatever. I don’t really care what you think. Your father stole something that belonged to me-something very important-and even though I’ve got it back, it would really be a bad example to set if his son married a billionaire and he was set for life. Nothing against you personally, see? Just-hang out here for a week, and I’ll send you back to the Air Force, and no problem. You want some magazines?”
“Do I want-no, I don’t want some magazines! I want you to let me go! Jesus fucking Christ, you’re crazy! You can’t just-kidnap people if they’re about to do something you don’t want them to do!” And that was another thing that always sounded pathetic in the movies, but by this point John was too angry to care.
McKay blinked. “Fine, be that way. If you change your mind about the magazines, the camera’s in that corner.” He pointed, then paused. “Well, one of the cameras. Enjoy.” And he turned and left.
John stared at the door and fought down the urge to run over and pound on it. Useless, and always, always looked stupid in the movies.
He rubbed his forehead. He’d been kidnapped by an evil billionaire, in order to keep him from marrying another (maybe evil?) billionaire, because his father had embezzled money and (apparently) stolen something from Billionaire 1, and all Billionaire 1 could say about this was You want some magazines?
Jesus fucking Christ.
~~~
He tried breaking the lock. He tried breaking the window lock. He tried breaking the window, again. He tried breaking the door. After a couple hours of this (or more, or less, but who knew with no clock in the room) he took a rest, then tried breaking the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
He was lying on the bed and considering taking a shower-were there cameras in the bathroom?-when the door opened and a guy who was definitely large enough to be an Air Force major, by McKay’s standards, stepped in with a little wheely food tray. “Dinner,” said the guy, and left again.
Next time the door opened, he was going to be quick enough to jump whoever it was and get the fuck out.
He wondered if the food was drugged. It was a good way to keep him from trying to break out, although obviously he wasn’t having much success on that front so far-and if tonight’s waiter was a typical staff member at the McKay residence, getting out of the room would probably not be enough. Also, McKay could see everything he did…
Eventually, he gave up thinking and pulled off one of the metal covers. And…Jesus. He didn’t recognize half this stuff. Rich people food, no question, food for people who could afford to spend John’s yearly pay at a restaurant, and then complain about the quality. McKay was-he’d been able to deal with Trixie because he could barely tell she was rich. McKay was so obvious about it, it was sort of halfway between intimidating and laughable.
He ate the food. It was good, except for the weird things in the brown sauce.
~~~
It took a day for him to break down. Assaulting the guard/waiter didn’t work, because he was huge, combat-trained, and after thirty seconds he had three of his friends to help him. Interestingly enough, they barely hurt him at all. That, at least, fit with what McKay had told him-maybe he really did just want John out of the way for a week, nothing more. That was comforting. Still weird, but comforting.
But after a day of nothing happening at all, and nothing to do but go what the fuck? over and over again, and maybe push-ups when he was really desperate, John was going out of his mind. So he sighed, turned to the camera-which he’d been trying to ignore, without any success at all-and said, “Fine. Maybe a book?”
~~~
He’d thought that one of the Happy Helpers would bring him something, but McKay himself showed up again instead. John thought about jumping him and holding him hostage, but he didn’t have a weapon-there was nothing breakable in the room-and threatening to break someone’s neck before other people shot you was more comedy than anything else. Maybe he’d make a garrote out of the sheets before the next visit.
Violence out, he started trying to figure out how long he could get McKay to stay. The guy was nuts, but at least he was interesting nuts.
“Here, I brought you this,” said McKay, and John reached out and took the copy of-War and Peace.
“Real funny, McKay.”
Shrug. “You’ve got six more days with nothing else to do, I figured I’d better pick something long.” Pause. “How are you doing?”
“I’m going insane, how do you think I’m doing?” John resisted the urge to throw the book at McKay, because then he might take it away. “Other than that, nothing’s changed since last time. I still think you’re crazy, I still want you to let me go, I’m still going to try every escape opportunity I see, and I’m still going to at least try to get you arrested for this.”
That got him a disdainfully amused look. “Uh-huh, and you’re going to meet with loads of success. I’m a genius with billions of dollars. The military regularly begs me to consult for them. The U.S. President asks my advice.”
“And I’m modest, too,” John muttered.
“Modesty is for morons and people with low self-esteem. Look, why do you want to escape?”
John blinked at that. “Because you’re holding me prisoner!”
“Circular reasoning. Why is me holding you prisoner bad?”
He was certifiably crazy. “Why is you restricting my basic freedom bad?”
McKay leaned back against the door. “The military does that every day. You can’t leave your post, you can’t go AWOL, you have to do what your senior officers tell you to. I’m only telling you to do one simple thing, and it’s not even hard. Why does that make me worse?”
John glared. “I didn’t consent to this.”
“You didn’t consent to anything the military tells you to do, either. All right, you consented to follow orders when you joined, but if they ship you off to Iraq next week and you end up with an idiot CO who orders you to your death, you can’t do anything about it, and I doubt you’d consent to that.”
John blinked. “You have something against the military, huh?”
McKay straightened abruptly. “No.”
“Also you suck at lying.”
“I…had a bad experience,” said McKay stiffly. After a pause, he added, “And they’re all violent fascist moronic children who care more about how straight they stand than-than anything remotely important.” He stopped, opened and closed his mouth, and then deliberately leaned back against the door. “Plus, I only ever met one who could do anything remotely resembling physics.” His tone was a really bad forced-casual.
“You mean,” said John, “we’re all violent fascist moronic et cetera.”
A second’s pause. “Fine,” said McKay slowly. “You’re all violent fascist moronic et cetera. But that’s beside the point.”
“Which is what, again?”
McKay’s mouth worked for a second, which was actually fun to watch, but then he came up with a triumphant, “Your confinement is the point. Specifically, how I’m not doing anything bad to you. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Uh-huh. By holding me in a movie set for historical porn.”
“For historical porn?”
“Silk sheets much?” John waved his hand toward the bed. “Slippery. Hard to sleep on. Can I get some real ones, maybe?”
“Look, I hired someone to do the decorating, okay? I think it looks fine, but whatever. My point,” and McKay paused for emphasis, “is this: Do you, in fact, want to marry Trixie Venables?”
“No,” said John. “But I think I’m pretty capable of not marrying her all by myself. All I have to do is not stand with her in front of an altar and say ‘I do’. Not seeing the problem here.”
“John,” said McKay slowly and clearly-the first time he’d said John’s name, actually-“you are underestimating the woman. She has resources. She’s in the enviable position-in the fabulously rich world, anyway-of being able to marry whoever the hell she wants. She is used to getting what she wants, she’s very good at getting what she wants, and what she wants is you. She might not have been able to marry you before the end of the week, but she would have gotten the ball rolling.”
“Look,” said John. “This is not the Middle Ages. All I have to do is say no. Thanks for your concern, but the kidnapping services really aren’t needed.”
“Your parents have been pressuring you to do this, haven’t they?” McKay pressed.
This was ammunition. And suddenly John was angry. “My parents have been pressuring me to do this because you are going to destroy their lives! Look, McKay, I don’t see why you think I should be so happy to have you around at all, let alone as my jailor, because you are about to force my family into bankruptcy! So shut the fuck up about for my own good, shut the fuck up about Trixie, shut the fuck up about my parents pressuring me, and get the hell out of my historical porn set cell, okay?”
McKay’s mouth snapped shut. After a second, he said, “Fine. But you have no idea what’s going on, you have no idea what these people are like, and you really have no idea what was at stake when your father decided it was a good idea to steal from me. Have fun basking in your ignorance,” and he left.
God. Were people even allowed to be this infuriating all by themselves?
~~~
McKay had visited right after breakfast. By dinner, John was a hundred pages into War and Peace, and was actually kind of almost liking it. At the very least, it was distracting him from totally flipping out and killing himself trying to break down the door.
He was still furious as hell with McKay-and really, why the hell hadn’t he brought that up before? He’d been mad because he was a prisoner, and because McKay was an asshole-a rich asshole, which was worse-but he hadn’t been thinking about his dad at all.
Of course, he’d spent the last week pissed off at his dad for trying to sell him into marriage like some feudal overlord, but it was still his dad, and if McKay wasn’t pulling his kamikaze banking thing, his dad wouldn’t have had to push John into marrying Trixie-and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Right.
Yeah, he knew his dad wasn’t that great a person. But he didn’t want him to suddenly become, like, homeless or anything.
And that triggered a mental image of his parents as street people, with stringy hair and shopping carts full of garbage, asking strangers for money. He took a couple of deep breaths and concentrated very hard on page 117 of War and Peace, and so didn’t actually have to run to the bathroom and throw up. But it was a close thing.
~~~
After dinner, McKay came back. His arms were full of books.
“Hi,” he said.
John glared at him for precisely three seconds and went back to War and Peace.
“Look,” said McKay. “It’s-been pointed out to me that I’m being kind of an asshole.”
“No shit,” came out before he could stop it, but the second thought was, by whom, exactly? McKay had-what, a friend? a girlfriend? a wife? someone who’d actually voluntarily spend time with him, who was a decent enough person to point out that he was being an asshole?
“My-coworker,” McKay continued, and okay, that made sense, someone who worked with him and was forced to spend time with him. John felt sorry for the poor bastard, whoever he was, “was very vehement about it, and in retrospect, I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have said some of the stuff that I did.”
John could almost see the five-year-old superimposed over McKay’s image, apologizing because the teacher made him. Uh-huh. He wanted to meet McKay’s coworker.
Which led to-what, exactly, did McKay do? Big business, obviously, but his dad had never really said what the business was, and John didn’t read Fortune 500 in his spare time. McKay had said something about physics, earlier-was he a physicist? And he’d introduced himself as Dr. Rodney McKay. Huh. Not your typical corporate CEO, then.
McKay was still talking, looking sour-faced. “I shouldn’t have said that about your parents. I have forced them into this situation, and I have no right to comment on whatever actions they’re taking because of it.”
Silence. John waited.
“…even though forcing you to marry someone is totally inhumane and-never mind. I brought you books.”
“What?” John looked up.
“Books. I thought maybe you’d want something other than a huge depressing Russian classic. Here.” McKay walked over and dumped the books on the bed. From where he was sitting, John could see Asimov, Heinlein, and at least four Trek novelizations. Huh. McKay was a sci-fi geek. Go figure.
But, John reminded himself, he’s a sci-fi geek who’s destroying your family and holding you prisoner. And wow, that sounds like a bad movie. “Thanks. I’ll get right on those. Right after I finish this.”
“It’s like fourteen hundred pages.”
“Then I’m one-fourteenth of the way through. And as you so kindly pointed out earlier, I have six more days with nothing to do but read. Unless you want to get me a TV or stay and entertain me sixteen hours a day.”
McKay was quiet for a little while. John read. Watched the words. Whatever. Eventually, he heard the door clicking shut.
~~~
McKay came back the next day. By then, John had cooled down a little-although he was still managing to be kind of mad at himself for doing so-and in the process, had found out that he didn’t like War and Peace nearly so much when he wasn’t trying to keep himself from punching the wall. So after breakfast, he’d dug through the sci-fi novels and settled down with one of the X-Wing series. He got halfway through it in an hour, and was startled away from Corran Horn and Wedge Antilles by McKay coming in.
He wasn’t carrying anything this time. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you, too, yes I’m fine, and you?” said McKay, sounding irritated. “You wanted entertainment. Here I stand.”
John blinked. “You’re actually coming in here to entertain me?”
“No, I’m actually hiding from a dangerously incompetent moron who wants to co-author a paper with me and won’t take no, hell no, or I will kill you with this bomb I built for an answer. He’s surprisingly persistent, even in the face of danger to life and limb. Unfortunately, he got out of the hospital this morning.”
Well, that sounded in-character. “He won’t look for you here?”
McKay smirked. “No one looks for me here. No one goes in here. No one even comes into this wing of the house. It’s absolute law punishable by dematerialization.”
“You’ve dematerialized people.”
“They believe I could dematerialize them. That’s all that matters.” McKay grinned. “So no one comes in here. Although you should hear some of the rumors about what I keep over here. Everything from superweapons to sex slaves.”
“Yeah, and what do you keep in here, besides me?”
McKay smirked. “Secret. Although,” thoughtful look, “I may leak something about you, because it would just make the sex slave theories so much more interesting.”
And-just no, okay. Just-no. Some of-whatever he was feeling-must have shown on his face, because McKay cleared his throat and said, “So. How shall I entertain you?” A pause, and he continued, frowning, “Considering what I just finished talking about, that came out much dirtier than I meant it to be. What do you want to do?”
Please go away, John thought, but honestly, even McKay was better than nobody at all. He was getting so sick at staring at the eighteenth-century-boudoir furniture.
Although what do you want to do was kind of a hard question. He vetoed small talk, heart-to-hearts, and life stories instantly, but after that, there wasn’t much left to do. “We could…play a game?” he volunteered lamely.
McKay’s eyebrows came down, and he said, “I don’t really know any that don’t require graphics and a mouse-oh, wait, I do know one. But you probably can’t play.”
“What do you mean, I can’t play?”
“I mean-well, look, we’ll try it out. I’ll start you off really easy, and we’ll see. Uh…157. Prime or not prime?”
“Prime,” said John. “Wait, this is the game?”
“Yeah,” said McKay. “And that’s right,” sounding surprised.
“Of course it’s right. Hate to break it to you, Dr. McKay, but I do actually know some math. So, your turn now?”
“Yep. Give it all you got.”
“Uh…1043.”
“Not prime. 843.”
“Stop with the easy ones. Not prime.”
McKay gave him a suspicious look. “3677.”
“Prime.” John grinned. Okay, maybe this was kind of fun.
Fifteen turns later, McKay was looking at him with a kind of grudging respect. Thirty turns after that, and he said, “What are you, some kind of idiot savant? You instinctively know prime numbers?”
“Is it so hard to believe that I might be smart, McKay?” John grinned and pounced. “23,687.”
“Prime, thank you. 19,533.”
“Not prime.” This was really, actually a lot of fun. He didn’t get to talk math with many people. “I can see you cracking, McKay. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I will not let you beat me at this, Sheppard.”
They played for another half hour or so, after which McKay checked his watch and did a double take. “I have to be somewhere five minutes ago. Nice seeing you again, Major Sheppard. Enjoy War and Peace,” and he was gone.
John laid back on the bed and thought about prime numbers for awhile, and then got mad at himself for having fun with his captor-although thinking of McKay as a captor was somehow totally ridiculous-and then decided getting mad was a waste of energy, especially if he was getting out in four days.
Getting mad was a waste. But getting even…no way, McKay had said, but John didn’t believe that. He was going to keep his family safe, and he was going to find a way to make McKay pay for screwing with him.
Even if the guy played an excellent game of prime/not prime.
~~~
Day Four started out in the dark, with Rodney storming into his room and handing John a cell phone. “Here. Talk.”
He stared at the phone, which told him it was four AM. “What-I don’t-” John said, and then the phone interrupted him.
“John? Johnny? Is that you?” His mom’s voice. He brought it up to his ear.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me-what do you-” and then he woke up and his brain started to work and he said, “McKay has me hostage because he doesn’t want me to marry-” and McKay snatched the phone back.
“There, see? He’s fine. I’m not starving him or hurting him or getting ready to kill him, and I’ll let him out on Wednesday. Seriously, it’s all your husband’s fault, anyway. And if you call the newspaper, it’ll be useless and I’ll get mad and it’ll just be totally counterproductive. And-oh, for God’s sake.” McKay thrust the phone back at John. “Tell her you’re okay.”
John seriously thought about telling her that he was undergoing horrible tortures, just so she would call the newspaper, and the police, but McKay was probably right, it wouldn’t work, and besides, that was a cruel thing to do to your mother. So he said, “Mom, I really am fine. Plenty of food, indoor plumbing, everything. If I could get out of this room, then okay, it’d be better, but I’m not hurt or anything.”
McKay took the phone again. “See? Please don’t call me again. Goodbye.” And he switched off the phone.
“This is a really low thing you’re doing, McKay,” John said after a second, just to see if it would do anything.
To his surprise, McKay slumped against the wall and rubbed his eyes, looking exhausted. “I know it is, Major. Believe me. But I-you don’t get it. There are people out there, people who are dangerous and powerful, and if they learn that some petty little embezzler can steal things from me just like that and get away with it, they’ll never get off my back, and eventually they’ll succeed. And that will be-bad. And I know you think I’m the scum of the earth and you won’t believe me if I tell you and tell you until I die of asphyxiation, but all I can give you here is my word. This is really, honestly for the best. And not just because Trixie Venables is a vulture who will suck your life out through your dick.”
John blinked at that last, but other things were more important at the moment. He said quietly, “You’re going to hurt my family.”
McKay was silent for a minute. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t do anything to stop it.”
“Then I think we’ve reached the end of all possible discussion.”
Another silence, and then McKay nodded and left.
~~~
John didn’t go back to sleep. He did rediscover the fact that the ceiling of his room did not hold the answers to the mysteries of the universe, no real surprise.
The problem was, he couldn’t think of anything, anything at all, that he could do to get back at Rodney McKay. If he made this his personal vendetta and devoted his entire life to the cause, he might be able to think of a way that John Sheppard could totally destroy a (maybe) genius multibillionaire, he might be able to do it, but it’d take years of careful planning.
Maybe he was just looking at the problem from the wrong angle.
He spent another hour or so trying to think of a right angle, and then, when the sky outside the window was almost blue, he thought of something.
He couldn’t destroy genius multibillionaire Dr. McKay. But-Rodney, maybe, he could destroy.
Or-here was a radical thought, let’s be constructive for once-if he could play up the weird little thing they had going with prime/not prime and guilt and imprisonment, he could maybe get himself close enough to McKay that he could figure out a way to convince him to not totally ruin John’s parents.
That thought kept him awake and staring up until breakfast came.
~~~
McKay’s arrival soon after breakfast was a total nonsurprise. “Hey,” said John. “Get any more phone calls from frightened mothers last night?”
“Look, I-” McKay started, and stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said after a second. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done anything yet, but I’m going to have to by the time I let you go. If you’re still missing, they’ll just believe I’ve done something nefarious to you as punishment, but once you show up again-”
“Can we not talk about this anymore?” said John. He wasn’t going to get close to McKay if all the guy could talk about was his evil plans.
“Okay,” said McKay-Rodney, thought John, think of him as Rodney-“we can play another game. I brought cards.” He held up a deck.
So they played cards on the totally anachronistic dressing table until the guard-waiter brought lunch. John expected Rodney to look up and bolt again, but instead, he started uncovering what looked like lunch for two. Fish, huh.
It was excellent, of course, and John said so when Rodney asked him how it was-they’d been kind of starved for conversation all morning, although the cards had helped-and he added, “It could use a little lemon, though.”
“We don’t have any,” said Rodney. “Sorry.”
John frowned. “You have caviar but no lemon?”
Rodney toyed with his fork. “I’m violently allergic to citrus. I go into anaphylactic shock. It isn’t pretty.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. Although John tucked the fact away for possible use later. Not that he really wanted to kill McKay-Rodney-but a weakness was a weakness. Rodney started in on a quick lecture of what to do if John was ever present when he ingested citrus, which John listened to, with interest, and also filed away.
After lunch, John wandered over and sprawled on the bed, over the covers, although he’d almost gotten the hang of not slipping on the silk sheets. Rodney sat back in his chair and lifted an eyebrow. “Do you do that on purpose?”
“Do what on purpose?” He stretched, which felt great after a morning of bending over a dressing table.
“The,” Rodney waved a hand, “centerfold thing.”
John blinked. “Centerfold thing?”
“You look like you’re posing for a magazine spread. The blankets, the open collar, the bedhead-and all that plus the,” another wave, “sprawling thing.”
“Sprawling thing.”
“You are so not that clueless.”
“I think I actually am.”
Rodney rubbed his forehead. “That’s like believing the physics groupies when they don’t wear underwear under their skirts and then sit right in the front row at lecture, and then ask what the hell you’re talking about when you call them on it. No way.”
“Physics groupies?” That took a second for John to get his brain around, and then-“Wait, you’re a professor?”
“I was, for awhile. At CalTech.”
Jesus. Maybe he really was-okay, half as smart as he said he was. “Why’d you quit?”
“I moved on to bigger and better things.” Rodney looked lofty for a second, then added, “Plus, undergrads.” He shivered.
“Undergrads. Right.” John shook his head. “What bigger and better things?”
Pause. “I can’t tell you,” said Rodney after a second.
Right.
There was an uncomfortable silence. “So, what about you, Major? What exactly do you do, in the military?”
“Fly helicopters, mostly,” said John.
“Oh? Where to? Or from?”
John smiled tightly. “I can’t tell you that.”
Pause. “Of course,” said Rodney.
And he sounded-hurt, or angry, or something. And John just had to ask, “What is this problem you have with the military? Did they feed you citrus without knowing or something?”
“It’s classified beyond belief,” said Rodney, “but the gist of it is: there was this new program that they needed my help with. And we went somewhere, and met some people. And something went wrong, and I could have fixed it, but procedure dictated that we leave, so they dragged me out and people got hurt. And-dead. And I decided that the military really didn’t deserve to have me, so I went and made billions of dollars instead, and now I do my own research, and screw them.” Most of the-well, almost-a-story-had been in a sort of a forced-level voice, but it rose on the end, almost cracked. Rodney had clenched one fist.
John wondered how much of the story was true. If he’d known Rodney better-it seemed like he was telling the truth. “Procedure exists for a good reason,” he said finally, carefully.
“For a-you weren’t there, Sheppard. John. You didn’t see what happened to these people-okay, we’re not talking about this any more. I asked you about you. How did we end up talking about me? Tell me-stuff. What’s your favorite food?”
“Turkey sandwiches,” said John. “What’s yours?”
Rodney got kind of a dreamy look on his face. “Hard to say,” he said. “I have kind of a weird diet. I can go for days on Powerbars and like it, but then I remember that I have this chef, who can make me anything I want in the world, which is nice.”
He kept talking about food, and John let his head drop back on the pillow and thought. Rodney was a really strange rich guy. He didn’t act rich, he hadn’t come from rich people, and if the Powerbar thing was true, he didn’t really take full advantage of his-richness. And then there was the way he’d said it-so casual, And I decided that the military really didn’t deserve to have me, so I went and made billions of dollars instead. Like there was no doubt at all that he could make that much money, like it was just a matter of deciding whether he wanted to or not.
And then compare that to the room, the food, the clothes…he didn’t quite add up. Yet.
“Okay, and now we’re talking about me again. I’m the horrible captor here, I’m supposed to be beating the information out of you. Treasured childhood memory, go.”
The lack of sleep was catching up to him, a little, combining with the situation that was still, no matter how he looked at it, weird beyond belief, and John closed his eyes and remembered. “When I was ten, I got to go up in a plane with a friend of my dad’s who was a pilot. He let me hold the controls. We were up for about half an hour, just-hanging in the sky, blue all around, and all these hills beneath us, stretching out for forever. It was like gravity had forgotten all about us, like we were in this special place where the laws of the universe didn’t work anymore. It was the best feeling I’d ever had, flying.”
Silence again, and John smiled at the insides of his eyelids, remembering, and said, “Your turn. Go.”
“I-” and Rodney sounded a little taken aback. “I don’t really have-”
“Go, Rodney.”
“Mozart,” said Rodney. “I-learning Mozart. It always-it was just so perfect, divisions and subdivisions and-well. That’s the best memory I have of childhood. Probably I was ten or eleven.”
So Rodney was musical. Ph.D., former professor, physics and math genius, billionaire, and a musician. At least he wasn’t stunningly gorgeous, too, although-John had to admit he was interesting to watch. All the little gestures, that weird lopsided mouth, the abrupt conversation switches, the quick blue eyes-
No, he said to himself, firm and kind of appalled. You are only allowed to do this when there’s no way it could go wrong. Stop and think for a second about all the ways this could go wrong. No, no, no. Also, Stockholm Syndrome much?
He forced himself to think about numbers, equations, primes and not-primes, until he was vaguely aware of Rodney saying something. “Hm?”
“I said, while you take your little afternoon nap, I actually have work that I have to be doing, so I’m going to leave.”
“Okay,” he sighed.
“I hope you’re aware that when I came into your room last night, I had not in fact gone to sleep yet, and I was up at seven this morning. Think about that while you doze off.”
I’m being held captive by a crazy physicist, thought John, I think I win on who’s-the-most-miserable, but he didn’t think he actually said it out loud.
~~~
He woke up sometime later that afternoon-note to self, tell Rodney to bring a clock-and thought about progress.
They were-becoming friends, maybe. Rodney had trusted him enough to tell him a possibly-fatal weakness, although he wasn’t sure exactly where that registered in Rodney’s own mind; he hadn’t seemed to think it was a big deal. Probably having to deal with the possibility of death by orange every day of his life blunted the danger a bit, his brain provided, sarcastic. Uh-huh. John had to wonder what it’d be like to live with an allergy like that, knowing that if you were just a little bit careless and didn’t check the ingredients on the package or ask the waiter at the restaurant, you could die.
Well, Rodney had survived-what, thirty-something years?-with this thing, so maybe John was overreacting. But it still seemed kind of…harsh.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading, and finished Rogue Squadron and two of the Trek novels before sighing and picking up War and Peace again. There was only so much bad science fiction he could take at once, and really, War and Peace was pretty good.
~~~
“What, are you stupid or something?” Rodney was saying into the cell phone, which was a little glow bobbing along at the door to John’s room. “That wouldn’t work even if the design was perfect, and I’ve seen your specs, so I know the design is flawed in about ten places, so not only will it not work, it’ll probably blow up the building in the process. What was the basis of this theory again? Are you trying to claim the moon is made of green cheese, or what?”
John blinked blearily at Rodney, barely illuminated by the cell phone’s little light, and tried to figure out what was going on. He had a weird sense of déjà vu, but Rodney obviously wasn’t talking to his mother this time, unless his mother had become a scientist when John wasn’t looking, which was unlikely.
“Yes, yes, I know that Zelenka signed off on the project, but what he signed off on and what you showed me are two ridiculously different things. I’m thinking bait-and-switch, here. No, we’re done talking now. Bye.” Rodney hit the button on the phone, and John tried to get his brain to work.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he managed after a few seconds.
“Checking up on you,” said Rodney, sounding mildly surprised. “I figured I’d look in and see if you were bored.”
“It’s the middle of the night!”
“Yeah, figuring that out.” Rodney’s voice had moved closer to the bed. “Sorry about that. Although really, one AM, not that late.”
“What, are you an insomniac or something? Yesterday it was four, today it’s one. Do you ever sleep?”
“Well. Yes, I sleep. But it’s been argued that I should probably do it more. Although I don’t see what the problem is, really. I think the only people who ever seriously lecture me on the sleep thing have never been grad students. Everyone else understands how much worse it could be.”
“Right.” John rubbed his eyes. “Great. Can you go away now?”
“What? Oh, yes. Sorry about that. Sleep well.” Rodney flicked the phone open again and dialed, heading for the door. “Radek? Have you seen what Jolinsky was trying to pass off as the ZPM project you approved? Do you understand how dead we all would have been if he’d actually gone through with it without checking in with me first?”
John let his head fall back onto the pillow and started laughing helplessly. Something to be said about being kidnapped by a crazy physicist; at least there was more amusement value than kidnapping by, say, enemy forces.
cont in part two
“I wasn’t thinking, all right? We needed money. After awhile, I was starting to think that we might actually get rich-”
“Dad,” John said, speaking in slow, precise tones. “You were embezzling money. That is against the law. It is dangerous. And-oh yeah. Wrong.”
His dad spread his hands. “Johnny, I wish I could say I hadn’t done it. But this is the situation. I don’t think McKay’s going to press charges-he’s never really been much for entirely legal proceedings, himself-but he’s a ruthless bastard. We’re going to be absolutely ruined.”
Northwest corner, pass the window-“Dad, I don’t know what I can do. I mean, you know I’ll do what I can for you, but my salary isn’t-”
“No, Johnny, I know. That isn’t what I’m asking.”
John stopped pacing, looked his dad in the face. That was the look that came right before Mr. Sheppard Senior did something that he knew was totally low. It was pasted on over a frighteningly defeated air-none of his dad’s scams had ever backfired quite this badly.
He was so going to hate this. “What do you want, Dad?”
His dad sighed. “Trixie Venables has been sniffing around you again.”
“Dad.” He really shouldn’t have been horrified. He really shouldn’t-“Dad, I can’t-”
“She’s a billionaire, John. At least. And she wants you, you know that. I’m not just suggesting this for me. You’d be set for life. You’d never have to worry about money again.”
“I don’t really worry about money now. Dad, Jesus Christ, this is medieval.”
His dad shrugged. “I can’t force you to do it, John. I can only ask you. And-you know the consequences, if you don’t.”
“Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” John turned and started out of the room. Left-right-left-right, and he didn’t think about what it might do to his family that he’d said no. He didn’t.
~~~
His mom was the one who managed it, finally.
“Okay, okay! I’ll-Jesus. I’ll take her out on one date, all right? We’ll go to dinner or something. But I’m still not going to marry her this weekend.”
His mother smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Thank you, John. Thank you.”
Jesus.
So he called Trixie, suffered through fifteen minutes of her waffling about which restaurant to choose and not-so-tactfully offering to pay for dinner. A gentleman would maybe have said no way, but John was being forced into gold-digging, here, so he just said sure a lot, and agreed to pick her up at eight on Friday.
He was praying for a miracle cancellation of his leave on Thursday, but no such luck, so he pulled up outside her house at seven fifty-five, parking right in front of a blue Saturn that wasn’t nearly expensive enough for the neighborhood. There ensued fifteen minutes of waiting for her to actually be ready, although honestly, he really couldn’t tell the difference between the way she looked when she opened the door and the way she looked when she finally closed it behind them.
He did have to admit that both of those looks were pretty good, though. She had this great curly dark hair, thick and long and perfectly styled, and the dress she was wearing showed off a really excellent body.
No way was he marrying her. But looking at her for an evening wasn’t going to be too much of a hardship.
The date itself wasn’t totally excruciating, if only because he discovered that Trixie either liked football, or had learned to pretend to in order to keep her dates amused. That killed most of the main course, although the appetizers and dessert were taken over by Trixie talking about…something.
John knew he was being kind of an asshole about this. The woman genuinely liked him, apparently-but, Jesus Christ. He could still barely believe he was actually doing this.
But…well. He didn’t want to let his parents be thrown out into the street to starve.
But he couldn’t just marry her, for Christ’s sake.
He couldn’t.
No way.
~~~
On the way back to Trixie’s, John looked out his rearview mirror and thought, hey, didn’t I see that blue Saturn behind us on the way to the restaurant? but then they reached her house and he was too busy thinking what if she invites me in? to concentrate on that anymore.
Fortunately, she didn’t. She smiled at him, lipstick still perfect, and said, “I had a great time tonight, John,” and leaned in and kissed him.
He kissed her back, because it seemed like the nice thing to do, and he had to admit that she felt good, and when she opened her mouth, tasted even better.
She pulled away, smiled at him, and said, “I’ll call you,” then went inside.
Yeah, he was a total asshole.
~~~
He hadn’t given his parents the hotel room number, thank God, so they couldn’t call him up and ask how the date had gone. Trixie did have it, though, and Saturday, she called him up and said she had tickets to the game on Sunday.
Football was football. And she really could say some intelligent things about it.
~~~
Two dates later-in the space of four days, although he did have to admit that, considering his leave only lasted another week, she had to move fast-he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Trixie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I really need to tell you. I’m not just dating you because I like you.”
But she just smiled and said, “I know about your family’s money problems, John. Don’t worry. I’m just seeing this as an opportunity for us to get to know each other better, now that we have a reason to be together.”
Oh.
That day, they were at her house, curled up on the couch watching TV. John had found, now that avoiding his parents had become something of a mission, he really didn’t have all that much to do, so when Trixie called, he was getting more inclined to say yes.
This was getting-weird. Or serious. Or something. He rested his chin on her hair and stared out the window. After a second of, hey, haven’t I seen that blue Saturn before? he was about to say something, but then Trixie lifted her head and kissed him. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. You do like me, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he said-but he still wasn’t really sure. Okay, she was hot and she knew what a first down was, but did he really know her well enough to like her? They’d only been dating for what, less than a week? And he knew what about her, exactly?
“See? No problem.” And she kissed him again, and maybe he wasn’t sure if he liked her or not, but she still tasted really good.
~~~
He noticed the blue Saturn again on his way home, and finally pulled his head out of his ass and thought, these people are following me. What the hell is going on here?
But then it turned out to be too late, because the second he stepped out of his car at the hotel, the blue Saturn pulled up next to him and two big guys stepped out, and he felt a little sting on the side of his neck, and then it was all dark.
~~~
When he woke up, he felt like total shit, but he forced his eyes open anyway and blinked at the large-no, huge-bedroom around him. He’d never had a reason to use the word sumptuous before-even Trixie was really tasteful about being rich-but this, this was it, right here. Velvet curtains and statuary and famous paintings on the walls-where the fuck was he? A European castle?
The total-shit feeling didn’t really fade, but he pushed the covers back and started working on getting up. He figured out that the sheets were silk about halfway there, followed by a sudden sliding sensation, after which he was not so much up as down.
At least he was out of the bed.
He levered himself to his feet using the nightstand, breathed deeply for a second, and looked down. Boxers. First order of business: get dressed.
Second order of business included finding a gun and pointing it at whoever had brought him here, but John believed in taking one thing at a time. Clothes first, then violence. He took some unsteady steps toward the carved some-kind-of-expensive-wood closet, and opened it.
Clothes. Score.
But then he tried some on, and it became less score and more what the fuck? because they were all exactly his size. And they were all expensive. That was…creepy.
On the plus side, the aftereffects of whatever drug he’d been given were fading, slowly. By the time he’d pulled on the most understated outfit he could find (black pants, dark blue shirt, and he didn’t even want to know what they were made of) he could move around without feeling like he was going to throw up or pass out if he took a step too fast.
Great. Ready for step two. He tried the door.
It was locked. Damn, but not that big of a surprise. He looked around the rest of the room-one other door, leading to a bathroom, no way out from there; one window, also locked, and four stories up, not helpful until he got desperate and was willing to try and climb around the side of a building. He went back to the door. Very sturdy. The lock was-electronic?
Yep. The handle was this old-fashioned-looking curly wooden thing, but the lock itself was a plate of metal. Not helpful. Looked like it was going to be the window after all.
But the window was also electronically locked-goddammit, why didn’t he know how to bypass these things?-and absolutely refused to break, even when John picked up the spindly chair at the dressing table (Jesus Christ, a dressing table? Where the hell was he?) and attacked it.
The chair didn’t break, either.
This was just weird.
~~~
After way too long-there weren’t any clocks in the room, which, in John’s opinion, was better than Chinese water torture for driving a prisoner insane-the door opened.
“Huh,” said the guy standing there. “You know, I thought you’d be bigger?”
John sat up on the bed and took a second to process.
“I suppose I’m stereotyping, but to me, an Air Force major just suggests more…mass,” the guy continued, stepping in and shutting the door behind him. “Maybe you should be working out more. How are you feeling?”
John blinked his way back to reality. Unfortunately, reality was about the same as where he’d been a second ago. “Like crap,” he said, because it was true. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention? Dr. Rodney McKay. Nice to meet you.”
Oh. This suddenly-made even less sense. “You kidnapped me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. No other options, really.” McKay picked up a little figurine from a shelf, frowned at it for a second, and put it back. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you or anything.”
For just a second, John wished that his dreams were more vivid, so he could pretend this was one. Instead, he took a deep breath. Calm. “Why am I here?”
McKay blinked at him. “Because of the thing, of course.”
“The…”
“Thing, thing. The wedding. To what’s-her-name. Trina, Trillian-”
“Trixie,” said John. “You kidnapped me because you think I’m going to marry Trixie.” He really wanted to wake up now.
“Because I know that you were going to marry Trixie, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s only till your leave’s over. Then I can probably talk to some people and get you stationed elsewhere, but this was the only easy way to do it now. She was working her way up to a quick justice-of-the-peace deal before you left, I hope you realize.”
John didn’t say that’s ridiculous, because it always sounded pathetic in the movies. “I think you might be overreacting just a little,” he tried instead.
“I think you might be too busy saluting and looking in the mirror to recognize a vulture when you see one, but whatever. I don’t really care what you think. Your father stole something that belonged to me-something very important-and even though I’ve got it back, it would really be a bad example to set if his son married a billionaire and he was set for life. Nothing against you personally, see? Just-hang out here for a week, and I’ll send you back to the Air Force, and no problem. You want some magazines?”
“Do I want-no, I don’t want some magazines! I want you to let me go! Jesus fucking Christ, you’re crazy! You can’t just-kidnap people if they’re about to do something you don’t want them to do!” And that was another thing that always sounded pathetic in the movies, but by this point John was too angry to care.
McKay blinked. “Fine, be that way. If you change your mind about the magazines, the camera’s in that corner.” He pointed, then paused. “Well, one of the cameras. Enjoy.” And he turned and left.
John stared at the door and fought down the urge to run over and pound on it. Useless, and always, always looked stupid in the movies.
He rubbed his forehead. He’d been kidnapped by an evil billionaire, in order to keep him from marrying another (maybe evil?) billionaire, because his father had embezzled money and (apparently) stolen something from Billionaire 1, and all Billionaire 1 could say about this was You want some magazines?
Jesus fucking Christ.
~~~
He tried breaking the lock. He tried breaking the window lock. He tried breaking the window, again. He tried breaking the door. After a couple hours of this (or more, or less, but who knew with no clock in the room) he took a rest, then tried breaking the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
He was lying on the bed and considering taking a shower-were there cameras in the bathroom?-when the door opened and a guy who was definitely large enough to be an Air Force major, by McKay’s standards, stepped in with a little wheely food tray. “Dinner,” said the guy, and left again.
Next time the door opened, he was going to be quick enough to jump whoever it was and get the fuck out.
He wondered if the food was drugged. It was a good way to keep him from trying to break out, although obviously he wasn’t having much success on that front so far-and if tonight’s waiter was a typical staff member at the McKay residence, getting out of the room would probably not be enough. Also, McKay could see everything he did…
Eventually, he gave up thinking and pulled off one of the metal covers. And…Jesus. He didn’t recognize half this stuff. Rich people food, no question, food for people who could afford to spend John’s yearly pay at a restaurant, and then complain about the quality. McKay was-he’d been able to deal with Trixie because he could barely tell she was rich. McKay was so obvious about it, it was sort of halfway between intimidating and laughable.
He ate the food. It was good, except for the weird things in the brown sauce.
~~~
It took a day for him to break down. Assaulting the guard/waiter didn’t work, because he was huge, combat-trained, and after thirty seconds he had three of his friends to help him. Interestingly enough, they barely hurt him at all. That, at least, fit with what McKay had told him-maybe he really did just want John out of the way for a week, nothing more. That was comforting. Still weird, but comforting.
But after a day of nothing happening at all, and nothing to do but go what the fuck? over and over again, and maybe push-ups when he was really desperate, John was going out of his mind. So he sighed, turned to the camera-which he’d been trying to ignore, without any success at all-and said, “Fine. Maybe a book?”
~~~
He’d thought that one of the Happy Helpers would bring him something, but McKay himself showed up again instead. John thought about jumping him and holding him hostage, but he didn’t have a weapon-there was nothing breakable in the room-and threatening to break someone’s neck before other people shot you was more comedy than anything else. Maybe he’d make a garrote out of the sheets before the next visit.
Violence out, he started trying to figure out how long he could get McKay to stay. The guy was nuts, but at least he was interesting nuts.
“Here, I brought you this,” said McKay, and John reached out and took the copy of-War and Peace.
“Real funny, McKay.”
Shrug. “You’ve got six more days with nothing else to do, I figured I’d better pick something long.” Pause. “How are you doing?”
“I’m going insane, how do you think I’m doing?” John resisted the urge to throw the book at McKay, because then he might take it away. “Other than that, nothing’s changed since last time. I still think you’re crazy, I still want you to let me go, I’m still going to try every escape opportunity I see, and I’m still going to at least try to get you arrested for this.”
That got him a disdainfully amused look. “Uh-huh, and you’re going to meet with loads of success. I’m a genius with billions of dollars. The military regularly begs me to consult for them. The U.S. President asks my advice.”
“And I’m modest, too,” John muttered.
“Modesty is for morons and people with low self-esteem. Look, why do you want to escape?”
John blinked at that. “Because you’re holding me prisoner!”
“Circular reasoning. Why is me holding you prisoner bad?”
He was certifiably crazy. “Why is you restricting my basic freedom bad?”
McKay leaned back against the door. “The military does that every day. You can’t leave your post, you can’t go AWOL, you have to do what your senior officers tell you to. I’m only telling you to do one simple thing, and it’s not even hard. Why does that make me worse?”
John glared. “I didn’t consent to this.”
“You didn’t consent to anything the military tells you to do, either. All right, you consented to follow orders when you joined, but if they ship you off to Iraq next week and you end up with an idiot CO who orders you to your death, you can’t do anything about it, and I doubt you’d consent to that.”
John blinked. “You have something against the military, huh?”
McKay straightened abruptly. “No.”
“Also you suck at lying.”
“I…had a bad experience,” said McKay stiffly. After a pause, he added, “And they’re all violent fascist moronic children who care more about how straight they stand than-than anything remotely important.” He stopped, opened and closed his mouth, and then deliberately leaned back against the door. “Plus, I only ever met one who could do anything remotely resembling physics.” His tone was a really bad forced-casual.
“You mean,” said John, “we’re all violent fascist moronic et cetera.”
A second’s pause. “Fine,” said McKay slowly. “You’re all violent fascist moronic et cetera. But that’s beside the point.”
“Which is what, again?”
McKay’s mouth worked for a second, which was actually fun to watch, but then he came up with a triumphant, “Your confinement is the point. Specifically, how I’m not doing anything bad to you. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Uh-huh. By holding me in a movie set for historical porn.”
“For historical porn?”
“Silk sheets much?” John waved his hand toward the bed. “Slippery. Hard to sleep on. Can I get some real ones, maybe?”
“Look, I hired someone to do the decorating, okay? I think it looks fine, but whatever. My point,” and McKay paused for emphasis, “is this: Do you, in fact, want to marry Trixie Venables?”
“No,” said John. “But I think I’m pretty capable of not marrying her all by myself. All I have to do is not stand with her in front of an altar and say ‘I do’. Not seeing the problem here.”
“John,” said McKay slowly and clearly-the first time he’d said John’s name, actually-“you are underestimating the woman. She has resources. She’s in the enviable position-in the fabulously rich world, anyway-of being able to marry whoever the hell she wants. She is used to getting what she wants, she’s very good at getting what she wants, and what she wants is you. She might not have been able to marry you before the end of the week, but she would have gotten the ball rolling.”
“Look,” said John. “This is not the Middle Ages. All I have to do is say no. Thanks for your concern, but the kidnapping services really aren’t needed.”
“Your parents have been pressuring you to do this, haven’t they?” McKay pressed.
This was ammunition. And suddenly John was angry. “My parents have been pressuring me to do this because you are going to destroy their lives! Look, McKay, I don’t see why you think I should be so happy to have you around at all, let alone as my jailor, because you are about to force my family into bankruptcy! So shut the fuck up about for my own good, shut the fuck up about Trixie, shut the fuck up about my parents pressuring me, and get the hell out of my historical porn set cell, okay?”
McKay’s mouth snapped shut. After a second, he said, “Fine. But you have no idea what’s going on, you have no idea what these people are like, and you really have no idea what was at stake when your father decided it was a good idea to steal from me. Have fun basking in your ignorance,” and he left.
God. Were people even allowed to be this infuriating all by themselves?
~~~
McKay had visited right after breakfast. By dinner, John was a hundred pages into War and Peace, and was actually kind of almost liking it. At the very least, it was distracting him from totally flipping out and killing himself trying to break down the door.
He was still furious as hell with McKay-and really, why the hell hadn’t he brought that up before? He’d been mad because he was a prisoner, and because McKay was an asshole-a rich asshole, which was worse-but he hadn’t been thinking about his dad at all.
Of course, he’d spent the last week pissed off at his dad for trying to sell him into marriage like some feudal overlord, but it was still his dad, and if McKay wasn’t pulling his kamikaze banking thing, his dad wouldn’t have had to push John into marrying Trixie-and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Right.
Yeah, he knew his dad wasn’t that great a person. But he didn’t want him to suddenly become, like, homeless or anything.
And that triggered a mental image of his parents as street people, with stringy hair and shopping carts full of garbage, asking strangers for money. He took a couple of deep breaths and concentrated very hard on page 117 of War and Peace, and so didn’t actually have to run to the bathroom and throw up. But it was a close thing.
~~~
After dinner, McKay came back. His arms were full of books.
“Hi,” he said.
John glared at him for precisely three seconds and went back to War and Peace.
“Look,” said McKay. “It’s-been pointed out to me that I’m being kind of an asshole.”
“No shit,” came out before he could stop it, but the second thought was, by whom, exactly? McKay had-what, a friend? a girlfriend? a wife? someone who’d actually voluntarily spend time with him, who was a decent enough person to point out that he was being an asshole?
“My-coworker,” McKay continued, and okay, that made sense, someone who worked with him and was forced to spend time with him. John felt sorry for the poor bastard, whoever he was, “was very vehement about it, and in retrospect, I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have said some of the stuff that I did.”
John could almost see the five-year-old superimposed over McKay’s image, apologizing because the teacher made him. Uh-huh. He wanted to meet McKay’s coworker.
Which led to-what, exactly, did McKay do? Big business, obviously, but his dad had never really said what the business was, and John didn’t read Fortune 500 in his spare time. McKay had said something about physics, earlier-was he a physicist? And he’d introduced himself as Dr. Rodney McKay. Huh. Not your typical corporate CEO, then.
McKay was still talking, looking sour-faced. “I shouldn’t have said that about your parents. I have forced them into this situation, and I have no right to comment on whatever actions they’re taking because of it.”
Silence. John waited.
“…even though forcing you to marry someone is totally inhumane and-never mind. I brought you books.”
“What?” John looked up.
“Books. I thought maybe you’d want something other than a huge depressing Russian classic. Here.” McKay walked over and dumped the books on the bed. From where he was sitting, John could see Asimov, Heinlein, and at least four Trek novelizations. Huh. McKay was a sci-fi geek. Go figure.
But, John reminded himself, he’s a sci-fi geek who’s destroying your family and holding you prisoner. And wow, that sounds like a bad movie. “Thanks. I’ll get right on those. Right after I finish this.”
“It’s like fourteen hundred pages.”
“Then I’m one-fourteenth of the way through. And as you so kindly pointed out earlier, I have six more days with nothing to do but read. Unless you want to get me a TV or stay and entertain me sixteen hours a day.”
McKay was quiet for a little while. John read. Watched the words. Whatever. Eventually, he heard the door clicking shut.
~~~
McKay came back the next day. By then, John had cooled down a little-although he was still managing to be kind of mad at himself for doing so-and in the process, had found out that he didn’t like War and Peace nearly so much when he wasn’t trying to keep himself from punching the wall. So after breakfast, he’d dug through the sci-fi novels and settled down with one of the X-Wing series. He got halfway through it in an hour, and was startled away from Corran Horn and Wedge Antilles by McKay coming in.
He wasn’t carrying anything this time. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you, too, yes I’m fine, and you?” said McKay, sounding irritated. “You wanted entertainment. Here I stand.”
John blinked. “You’re actually coming in here to entertain me?”
“No, I’m actually hiding from a dangerously incompetent moron who wants to co-author a paper with me and won’t take no, hell no, or I will kill you with this bomb I built for an answer. He’s surprisingly persistent, even in the face of danger to life and limb. Unfortunately, he got out of the hospital this morning.”
Well, that sounded in-character. “He won’t look for you here?”
McKay smirked. “No one looks for me here. No one goes in here. No one even comes into this wing of the house. It’s absolute law punishable by dematerialization.”
“You’ve dematerialized people.”
“They believe I could dematerialize them. That’s all that matters.” McKay grinned. “So no one comes in here. Although you should hear some of the rumors about what I keep over here. Everything from superweapons to sex slaves.”
“Yeah, and what do you keep in here, besides me?”
McKay smirked. “Secret. Although,” thoughtful look, “I may leak something about you, because it would just make the sex slave theories so much more interesting.”
And-just no, okay. Just-no. Some of-whatever he was feeling-must have shown on his face, because McKay cleared his throat and said, “So. How shall I entertain you?” A pause, and he continued, frowning, “Considering what I just finished talking about, that came out much dirtier than I meant it to be. What do you want to do?”
Please go away, John thought, but honestly, even McKay was better than nobody at all. He was getting so sick at staring at the eighteenth-century-boudoir furniture.
Although what do you want to do was kind of a hard question. He vetoed small talk, heart-to-hearts, and life stories instantly, but after that, there wasn’t much left to do. “We could…play a game?” he volunteered lamely.
McKay’s eyebrows came down, and he said, “I don’t really know any that don’t require graphics and a mouse-oh, wait, I do know one. But you probably can’t play.”
“What do you mean, I can’t play?”
“I mean-well, look, we’ll try it out. I’ll start you off really easy, and we’ll see. Uh…157. Prime or not prime?”
“Prime,” said John. “Wait, this is the game?”
“Yeah,” said McKay. “And that’s right,” sounding surprised.
“Of course it’s right. Hate to break it to you, Dr. McKay, but I do actually know some math. So, your turn now?”
“Yep. Give it all you got.”
“Uh…1043.”
“Not prime. 843.”
“Stop with the easy ones. Not prime.”
McKay gave him a suspicious look. “3677.”
“Prime.” John grinned. Okay, maybe this was kind of fun.
Fifteen turns later, McKay was looking at him with a kind of grudging respect. Thirty turns after that, and he said, “What are you, some kind of idiot savant? You instinctively know prime numbers?”
“Is it so hard to believe that I might be smart, McKay?” John grinned and pounced. “23,687.”
“Prime, thank you. 19,533.”
“Not prime.” This was really, actually a lot of fun. He didn’t get to talk math with many people. “I can see you cracking, McKay. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I will not let you beat me at this, Sheppard.”
They played for another half hour or so, after which McKay checked his watch and did a double take. “I have to be somewhere five minutes ago. Nice seeing you again, Major Sheppard. Enjoy War and Peace,” and he was gone.
John laid back on the bed and thought about prime numbers for awhile, and then got mad at himself for having fun with his captor-although thinking of McKay as a captor was somehow totally ridiculous-and then decided getting mad was a waste of energy, especially if he was getting out in four days.
Getting mad was a waste. But getting even…no way, McKay had said, but John didn’t believe that. He was going to keep his family safe, and he was going to find a way to make McKay pay for screwing with him.
Even if the guy played an excellent game of prime/not prime.
~~~
Day Four started out in the dark, with Rodney storming into his room and handing John a cell phone. “Here. Talk.”
He stared at the phone, which told him it was four AM. “What-I don’t-” John said, and then the phone interrupted him.
“John? Johnny? Is that you?” His mom’s voice. He brought it up to his ear.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me-what do you-” and then he woke up and his brain started to work and he said, “McKay has me hostage because he doesn’t want me to marry-” and McKay snatched the phone back.
“There, see? He’s fine. I’m not starving him or hurting him or getting ready to kill him, and I’ll let him out on Wednesday. Seriously, it’s all your husband’s fault, anyway. And if you call the newspaper, it’ll be useless and I’ll get mad and it’ll just be totally counterproductive. And-oh, for God’s sake.” McKay thrust the phone back at John. “Tell her you’re okay.”
John seriously thought about telling her that he was undergoing horrible tortures, just so she would call the newspaper, and the police, but McKay was probably right, it wouldn’t work, and besides, that was a cruel thing to do to your mother. So he said, “Mom, I really am fine. Plenty of food, indoor plumbing, everything. If I could get out of this room, then okay, it’d be better, but I’m not hurt or anything.”
McKay took the phone again. “See? Please don’t call me again. Goodbye.” And he switched off the phone.
“This is a really low thing you’re doing, McKay,” John said after a second, just to see if it would do anything.
To his surprise, McKay slumped against the wall and rubbed his eyes, looking exhausted. “I know it is, Major. Believe me. But I-you don’t get it. There are people out there, people who are dangerous and powerful, and if they learn that some petty little embezzler can steal things from me just like that and get away with it, they’ll never get off my back, and eventually they’ll succeed. And that will be-bad. And I know you think I’m the scum of the earth and you won’t believe me if I tell you and tell you until I die of asphyxiation, but all I can give you here is my word. This is really, honestly for the best. And not just because Trixie Venables is a vulture who will suck your life out through your dick.”
John blinked at that last, but other things were more important at the moment. He said quietly, “You’re going to hurt my family.”
McKay was silent for a minute. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t do anything to stop it.”
“Then I think we’ve reached the end of all possible discussion.”
Another silence, and then McKay nodded and left.
~~~
John didn’t go back to sleep. He did rediscover the fact that the ceiling of his room did not hold the answers to the mysteries of the universe, no real surprise.
The problem was, he couldn’t think of anything, anything at all, that he could do to get back at Rodney McKay. If he made this his personal vendetta and devoted his entire life to the cause, he might be able to think of a way that John Sheppard could totally destroy a (maybe) genius multibillionaire, he might be able to do it, but it’d take years of careful planning.
Maybe he was just looking at the problem from the wrong angle.
He spent another hour or so trying to think of a right angle, and then, when the sky outside the window was almost blue, he thought of something.
He couldn’t destroy genius multibillionaire Dr. McKay. But-Rodney, maybe, he could destroy.
Or-here was a radical thought, let’s be constructive for once-if he could play up the weird little thing they had going with prime/not prime and guilt and imprisonment, he could maybe get himself close enough to McKay that he could figure out a way to convince him to not totally ruin John’s parents.
That thought kept him awake and staring up until breakfast came.
~~~
McKay’s arrival soon after breakfast was a total nonsurprise. “Hey,” said John. “Get any more phone calls from frightened mothers last night?”
“Look, I-” McKay started, and stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said after a second. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done anything yet, but I’m going to have to by the time I let you go. If you’re still missing, they’ll just believe I’ve done something nefarious to you as punishment, but once you show up again-”
“Can we not talk about this anymore?” said John. He wasn’t going to get close to McKay if all the guy could talk about was his evil plans.
“Okay,” said McKay-Rodney, thought John, think of him as Rodney-“we can play another game. I brought cards.” He held up a deck.
So they played cards on the totally anachronistic dressing table until the guard-waiter brought lunch. John expected Rodney to look up and bolt again, but instead, he started uncovering what looked like lunch for two. Fish, huh.
It was excellent, of course, and John said so when Rodney asked him how it was-they’d been kind of starved for conversation all morning, although the cards had helped-and he added, “It could use a little lemon, though.”
“We don’t have any,” said Rodney. “Sorry.”
John frowned. “You have caviar but no lemon?”
Rodney toyed with his fork. “I’m violently allergic to citrus. I go into anaphylactic shock. It isn’t pretty.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. Although John tucked the fact away for possible use later. Not that he really wanted to kill McKay-Rodney-but a weakness was a weakness. Rodney started in on a quick lecture of what to do if John was ever present when he ingested citrus, which John listened to, with interest, and also filed away.
After lunch, John wandered over and sprawled on the bed, over the covers, although he’d almost gotten the hang of not slipping on the silk sheets. Rodney sat back in his chair and lifted an eyebrow. “Do you do that on purpose?”
“Do what on purpose?” He stretched, which felt great after a morning of bending over a dressing table.
“The,” Rodney waved a hand, “centerfold thing.”
John blinked. “Centerfold thing?”
“You look like you’re posing for a magazine spread. The blankets, the open collar, the bedhead-and all that plus the,” another wave, “sprawling thing.”
“Sprawling thing.”
“You are so not that clueless.”
“I think I actually am.”
Rodney rubbed his forehead. “That’s like believing the physics groupies when they don’t wear underwear under their skirts and then sit right in the front row at lecture, and then ask what the hell you’re talking about when you call them on it. No way.”
“Physics groupies?” That took a second for John to get his brain around, and then-“Wait, you’re a professor?”
“I was, for awhile. At CalTech.”
Jesus. Maybe he really was-okay, half as smart as he said he was. “Why’d you quit?”
“I moved on to bigger and better things.” Rodney looked lofty for a second, then added, “Plus, undergrads.” He shivered.
“Undergrads. Right.” John shook his head. “What bigger and better things?”
Pause. “I can’t tell you,” said Rodney after a second.
Right.
There was an uncomfortable silence. “So, what about you, Major? What exactly do you do, in the military?”
“Fly helicopters, mostly,” said John.
“Oh? Where to? Or from?”
John smiled tightly. “I can’t tell you that.”
Pause. “Of course,” said Rodney.
And he sounded-hurt, or angry, or something. And John just had to ask, “What is this problem you have with the military? Did they feed you citrus without knowing or something?”
“It’s classified beyond belief,” said Rodney, “but the gist of it is: there was this new program that they needed my help with. And we went somewhere, and met some people. And something went wrong, and I could have fixed it, but procedure dictated that we leave, so they dragged me out and people got hurt. And-dead. And I decided that the military really didn’t deserve to have me, so I went and made billions of dollars instead, and now I do my own research, and screw them.” Most of the-well, almost-a-story-had been in a sort of a forced-level voice, but it rose on the end, almost cracked. Rodney had clenched one fist.
John wondered how much of the story was true. If he’d known Rodney better-it seemed like he was telling the truth. “Procedure exists for a good reason,” he said finally, carefully.
“For a-you weren’t there, Sheppard. John. You didn’t see what happened to these people-okay, we’re not talking about this any more. I asked you about you. How did we end up talking about me? Tell me-stuff. What’s your favorite food?”
“Turkey sandwiches,” said John. “What’s yours?”
Rodney got kind of a dreamy look on his face. “Hard to say,” he said. “I have kind of a weird diet. I can go for days on Powerbars and like it, but then I remember that I have this chef, who can make me anything I want in the world, which is nice.”
He kept talking about food, and John let his head drop back on the pillow and thought. Rodney was a really strange rich guy. He didn’t act rich, he hadn’t come from rich people, and if the Powerbar thing was true, he didn’t really take full advantage of his-richness. And then there was the way he’d said it-so casual, And I decided that the military really didn’t deserve to have me, so I went and made billions of dollars instead. Like there was no doubt at all that he could make that much money, like it was just a matter of deciding whether he wanted to or not.
And then compare that to the room, the food, the clothes…he didn’t quite add up. Yet.
“Okay, and now we’re talking about me again. I’m the horrible captor here, I’m supposed to be beating the information out of you. Treasured childhood memory, go.”
The lack of sleep was catching up to him, a little, combining with the situation that was still, no matter how he looked at it, weird beyond belief, and John closed his eyes and remembered. “When I was ten, I got to go up in a plane with a friend of my dad’s who was a pilot. He let me hold the controls. We were up for about half an hour, just-hanging in the sky, blue all around, and all these hills beneath us, stretching out for forever. It was like gravity had forgotten all about us, like we were in this special place where the laws of the universe didn’t work anymore. It was the best feeling I’d ever had, flying.”
Silence again, and John smiled at the insides of his eyelids, remembering, and said, “Your turn. Go.”
“I-” and Rodney sounded a little taken aback. “I don’t really have-”
“Go, Rodney.”
“Mozart,” said Rodney. “I-learning Mozart. It always-it was just so perfect, divisions and subdivisions and-well. That’s the best memory I have of childhood. Probably I was ten or eleven.”
So Rodney was musical. Ph.D., former professor, physics and math genius, billionaire, and a musician. At least he wasn’t stunningly gorgeous, too, although-John had to admit he was interesting to watch. All the little gestures, that weird lopsided mouth, the abrupt conversation switches, the quick blue eyes-
No, he said to himself, firm and kind of appalled. You are only allowed to do this when there’s no way it could go wrong. Stop and think for a second about all the ways this could go wrong. No, no, no. Also, Stockholm Syndrome much?
He forced himself to think about numbers, equations, primes and not-primes, until he was vaguely aware of Rodney saying something. “Hm?”
“I said, while you take your little afternoon nap, I actually have work that I have to be doing, so I’m going to leave.”
“Okay,” he sighed.
“I hope you’re aware that when I came into your room last night, I had not in fact gone to sleep yet, and I was up at seven this morning. Think about that while you doze off.”
I’m being held captive by a crazy physicist, thought John, I think I win on who’s-the-most-miserable, but he didn’t think he actually said it out loud.
~~~
He woke up sometime later that afternoon-note to self, tell Rodney to bring a clock-and thought about progress.
They were-becoming friends, maybe. Rodney had trusted him enough to tell him a possibly-fatal weakness, although he wasn’t sure exactly where that registered in Rodney’s own mind; he hadn’t seemed to think it was a big deal. Probably having to deal with the possibility of death by orange every day of his life blunted the danger a bit, his brain provided, sarcastic. Uh-huh. John had to wonder what it’d be like to live with an allergy like that, knowing that if you were just a little bit careless and didn’t check the ingredients on the package or ask the waiter at the restaurant, you could die.
Well, Rodney had survived-what, thirty-something years?-with this thing, so maybe John was overreacting. But it still seemed kind of…harsh.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading, and finished Rogue Squadron and two of the Trek novels before sighing and picking up War and Peace again. There was only so much bad science fiction he could take at once, and really, War and Peace was pretty good.
~~~
“What, are you stupid or something?” Rodney was saying into the cell phone, which was a little glow bobbing along at the door to John’s room. “That wouldn’t work even if the design was perfect, and I’ve seen your specs, so I know the design is flawed in about ten places, so not only will it not work, it’ll probably blow up the building in the process. What was the basis of this theory again? Are you trying to claim the moon is made of green cheese, or what?”
John blinked blearily at Rodney, barely illuminated by the cell phone’s little light, and tried to figure out what was going on. He had a weird sense of déjà vu, but Rodney obviously wasn’t talking to his mother this time, unless his mother had become a scientist when John wasn’t looking, which was unlikely.
“Yes, yes, I know that Zelenka signed off on the project, but what he signed off on and what you showed me are two ridiculously different things. I’m thinking bait-and-switch, here. No, we’re done talking now. Bye.” Rodney hit the button on the phone, and John tried to get his brain to work.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he managed after a few seconds.
“Checking up on you,” said Rodney, sounding mildly surprised. “I figured I’d look in and see if you were bored.”
“It’s the middle of the night!”
“Yeah, figuring that out.” Rodney’s voice had moved closer to the bed. “Sorry about that. Although really, one AM, not that late.”
“What, are you an insomniac or something? Yesterday it was four, today it’s one. Do you ever sleep?”
“Well. Yes, I sleep. But it’s been argued that I should probably do it more. Although I don’t see what the problem is, really. I think the only people who ever seriously lecture me on the sleep thing have never been grad students. Everyone else understands how much worse it could be.”
“Right.” John rubbed his eyes. “Great. Can you go away now?”
“What? Oh, yes. Sorry about that. Sleep well.” Rodney flicked the phone open again and dialed, heading for the door. “Radek? Have you seen what Jolinsky was trying to pass off as the ZPM project you approved? Do you understand how dead we all would have been if he’d actually gone through with it without checking in with me first?”
John let his head fall back onto the pillow and started laughing helplessly. Something to be said about being kidnapped by a crazy physicist; at least there was more amusement value than kidnapping by, say, enemy forces.
cont in part two