Summer Pic-Fic Challenge: The Specimen Strikes Back (Chapter 4)
Originally posted by nacinom at Summer Pic-Fic Challenge: The Specimen Strikes Back (Chapter 4)
Title: The Specimen Strikes Back
Author: nacinom
Rating: PG13
Characters: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, drama
Spoilers: Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"
Chapter word count: 2638 (Chapter 4 of 10-ish)
Disclaimer: The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit.
Summary: The team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to coolbreeze1 for the very cool pic prompt and to my super beta editors:
amycat8733 and firedew1.
Written for: The sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge----------------------------
Chapter 4
John regained consciousness when he felt himself being rotated like a chicken splayed on a rotisserie. The frame’s motion triggered another bout of nausea. He opened his mouth and took a deep slow breath to stop the urge to upchuck whatever was left in his stomach. Not a smart move-he had forgotten about the foul air. Instead of retching, he coughed, a dry hacking that pulled at his sore stomach muscles.
Once he had been repositioned face up, with feet and head on the same level plane, the whole contraption locked into place. The jolt rekindled the pain from all his injuries. There were some, in mighty uncomfortable places, that he couldn’t account for based on what he remembered had been done to him. Be grateful for small mercies his grandmother used to say, mostly about all sorts of things that hadn’t made any sense to him when he was a little kid.
Once he stopped coughing, he realized that the room was perfectly quiet. The various torture implements were not turned on at the moment and the temperature was not as chilly as it had been. These had to be good things. Maybe Nana had been right.
He opened his eyes. Bright pink lights blinded him. Even though he immediately snapped them shut, a stinging sensation brought down a few tears. Spots of light continued to blaze through his firmly shut eyelids as though they had been burned onto his retinas.
Just as he had done all the other times he had come back to his senses, he pulled at the restraints in the hope that they had been miraculously loosened.
No such luck.
His body was a patchwork of different kinds of pain. Topping off the list of most annoying were the pulsing fire that enveloped his left arm, the headache that continued to pound his skull, the dozens of injection sites that stung like acid, and the intense cramps that shot through his arms and legs at random times.
Maybe he had also suffered brain damage because no matter how hard he wracked his brain, he couldn’t come up with a single, even remotely viable escape plan. Practically blind and shackled from head to ankle, he had nothing to work with.
The assurance of the leave no one behind policy provided no comfort because as far as he knew all his teammates were in as bad or worse trouble than him. To top it off, there hadn’t been any time to send Intel back to Atlantis about this mother of all FUBARed missions. By now they had definitely missed their last scheduled check-in. Elizabeth might have already sent Lorne on a search and rescue mission, where they would have come up with no clues as to their whereabouts.
He got yanked out of his funk by a series of loud clacks coming from the far side of the room. It sounded like multiple pairs of high heels walking on a hardwood floor. Buck up. You got company, he told himself.
The sound temporarily stopped and was replaced by a light tapping, possibly fingers hitting a keyboard. When the advancing clicking steps resumed, the temperature dropped quickly to its previous frigid level.
John shivered from the burst of cold air on his naked skin.
The steps stopped very close to his left side. John got a whiff of a sulfur smell strong enough to overpower the underlying formaldehyde-bleach scent of the air. Even the Wraith didn’t smell this bad.
To avoid being blinded by the lights again, he peered through his eyelashes. Above him, the pink lights had been dimmed so that he could see the light fixtures recessed within the rows of small mirrored square panels that completely covered the arched ceiling. The reflections were tiny and distorted. The best that John could figure was that the being looming next to him, outside the reach of his peripheral vision, had a golden head and lime green clothes. Or was it skin or fur?
It spewed out a rapid fire stream of guttural syllables. Maybe he was being ethnocentric, but to John it sounded like a weird remix of Klingon and either Russian or German. Of course that made him decide to call his captor Worf, even though Worf had been a good guy and this one-whether it was male, female or whatever-definitely was up to no good.
No cultural misunderstanding could possibly justify what he had been subjected to.
As soon as Worf stopped talking, a gender-neutral, toneless voice from the other side of the room said, “It is good that you are finally awake. The results of your analysis are aberrant; you must answer my questions.”
John skipped protesting the choice of “analysis” as a euphemism for medical torture and went right into pondering about what had just happened. Obviously, Worf & Co. had a universal translator of some sort, no funky (and hard to understand even for his Mensa-level intelligence) stargate-induced common-language effect around here. This implied that he had not been carried through a stargate and that he was not in some sort of secret facility that had somehow escaped first the MALP and then Rodney’s meticulous scans of the planet. The simplest explanation had to be that he was on a spaceship, a very alien one.
“Who are you?” he said. The rawness in his throat made him sound as raspy as a twenty-pack-a-day smoker or like the device that promptly translated his question in Worf’s language.
A whirling sound startled him. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, his previous sessions had trained him to associate that sound with pain.
He steeled himself to being hurt again.
Instead, a spray of liquid hit his dry, cracked lips. It tasted like water. He licked and swallowed all the moisture within his reach. Not at all dignified, but necessary.
More guttural sounds from Worf before the translator kicked in and said, “I will ask the questions and you will answer.” The mechanical voice paused with a theatrical flair before it continued. “What is your planet of origin?”
John picked the first thing that came to mind. “The place where you kidnapped me.”
As the translator did its thing, John wondered how accurate it was. Rodney’s primary concern would have been to figure out how it worked.
“That is false,” Worf said. “Genomic sequencing and single nucleotide polymorphism analyses indicate that you bear a very distant kinship with the other warm-blooded, bipedal sentient specimens we collected from that planet.”
That was impressive. The translator definitely had a very rich vocabulary, complete with plausible sounding scientific verbiage. John’s mind practically buzzed as it processed the bits of useful information mixed in with the technical mumbo jumbo. “Collected specimens? Who the hell are you?”
“Our identity is of no consequence to you. Suffice it to say, one of our missions is to carry out a comprehensive, intergalactic astrobiological survey of sentient and protosentient species. That is why we have captured you. If you want to regain your freedom, you must truthfully answer my questions. Where is your planet of origin?”
John suppressed the impulse to protest the legitimacy and morality of any sentient species collecting and experimenting on others. Undoubtedly that argument would fall on deaf ears or whatever sensory appendage Worf used for listening. He said, “Athos.”
“That is also false. We have collected numerous specimens from that planet, including the one we captured with you. You do not share sufficient haploidentity to support a claim of genetic kinship with the Athosians.”
John felt a mixture of relief and fear at this confirmation that Teyla had been snagged too. He had to find a way to make sure she was safe. “My parents were culled by the Wraith when I was a little kid and the Athosians took me in. I don’t remember where I came from originally.”
Warned by the loud steps, John acted unfazed by the large head covered in golden fur that suddenly loomed over him.
This feigned nonchalance was hard. Worf didn’t look like anything he had imagined. The best thing was that there was nothing bug-like or otherwise scary about him. The first analogy that popped into John’s head was of a goat or sheep with an incredibly developed, multi-lobed cranium and very tiny ears. Its pelt-covered face sported a short snout flanked by a pair of big, orange oval eyes with rhombus-shaped pupils. It wore a long-sleeve tunic without any visible buttons or zippers.
“Why do you insist in telling falsehoods? That story is a common one in this quadrant, but it is not true in your case.” The translator seemed to be working faster now. In perfect timing with the end of the sentence, Worf raised one arm to give John a brief glimpse of the small device it held between its seven long furry fingers.
Before John could close his fist, Worf splayed his fingers open as it placed the device into his palm. As soon as it touched his skin, John felt the familiar hum of Ancient technology. It was the life-sign detector he carried in a pocket of his tac-vest.
“Your activation of this instrument confirms the results of our phylogenetic analyses which indicate that you are a direct descendant of the Alterans who disappeared from this galaxy ten thousand years ago, presumably exterminated by the Wraith. Your existence is proof that they were not vanquished.” Worf took the life-sign detector away and waved a small round object in front of his nose.
John recognized his transmitter, now sporting a cracked casing and protruding filaments. It was broken beyond repair.
Worf continued with his lecture. “Moreover, this device that we removed from your arm, as well as your clothing and gear, contain elements not found in this galaxy. Finally, elemental analysis of your body fluids and biopsy samples from your major organs demonstrate traces of molecules and isotopes not endemic to this galaxy. All of these data irrefutably indicate your provenance from another part of the universe. Therefore I posit that a sizable group of Alterans fled from this galaxy and settled somewhere else where they bred sufficiently to produce progeny such as you.”
“I don’t know anything about Alterans,” John said. He wondered how well his feigned innocence would translate. Odds were high that once again his ATA gene had landed him in very deep doo-doo.
“What you know or do not know remains to be determined. This will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of my generation. You must l tell me where you are from if you want to earn your life and your freedom.”
“Okay, you got me. I am going to tell you about my real planet,” John said, deciding to switch tactics. “But before I tell you anything, I want to see my companion to make sure she’s alright.”
Worf made an obnoxious honking sound that went untranslated. John suspected that it was a laugh.
Then Worf grabbed his left arm and squeezed. John bit his lip to clamp down a yell. Somewhere under that fur, there were some mighty sharp claws or fingernails.
It leaned over him, giving him a prime view of the neat double row of teeth and blue tongue inside the lipless mouth as it spoke, spraying him with spittle that stung his skin. It did not release his arm until the translator had finished relaying the message, “You are in no position to make demands.”
“Okay, let me explain something to you in simple to translate words.” John waited for the translator to finish with that sentence before he continued. “I’m not going to tell you anything until I see her.”
They stared at each other until Worf stepped away where John couldn’t see him. There was a long pause in their friendly chat while Worf tapped away at something, maybe a computer keyboard, and spoke presumably with someone through a communication device. Given the loud way these people moved around, John felt certain that there wasn’t anyone else in the room. He could hear only Worf’s side of the conversation and the universal translator stayed quiet. Then, Worf stomped around the room, pulled open a couple of squeaky cabinets or drawers, and rummaged through some noisy objects.
John spent the time coming up with a plausible story to convince it that he needed Teyla’s help to provide the requested information. Somehow he also had to talk Worf into freeing him from the restraints. He didn’t think that it would be very hard since in his current position it would be impossible for him to show them his home planet’s position on any kind of star chart, whether it was on a computer monitor, holograph or whatever other form they used for navigation. Also, the way he was already hurting, it shouldn’t be too hard to look harmless. Honestly, he wasn’t positive that he could stand up on his own two feet right now, but if it meant a chance for escape, he would find a way.
Once together, he and Teyla would be able to overpower their captors.
Worf resumed his position next to John. It held a multipronged metal instrument in its hand. “It is unfortunate, but I cannot accommodate your request to see your companion. If you value your life and want to avoid suffering additional pain and injury, you will answer my questions without further delay.”
John wasn’t afraid for himself, he was worried for Teyla. “Look, I have to see her because she has some of the information you want.”
“I believe that my colleague has erred in disposing of your companion so quickly. She would have been useful as leverage for your cooperation.” Worf snapped a thin serrated blade onto one of the arms of the instrument. “I have other ways to convince you to answer my questions truthfully. I do not mind gathering more data on the mechanism of action and limitations of your species’ pain receptors.”
While the not so subtle treat washed over him like it was nothing, John felt as if someone had just stabbed him in the gut. “What do you mean dispose? Where is she?”
“Your companion was Athosian, a subtype that we have already extensively studied. She had no value as a survey specimen and her body mass index did not meet the minimal criteria for our other ongoing experiments. Therefore, she was terminated and recycled to fuel our bioorganic processor.”
Worf continued talking, but John tuned him out. He kept on replaying in his mind the words that told him in no uncertain terms that Teyla was dead.
The thought of escape left his mind.
All he could think about now was revenge. He hadn’t felt such boiling fury since the Genii siege of Atlantis when Kolya had told him that he had killed Elizabeth.
Worf’s associate had thrown Teyla away like garbage to be used for compost and Worf acted as if this was just a minor inconvenience to earning its people’s equivalent of a Nobel prize. No matter how much it hurt right now, John didn’t have the luxury to let himself grieve for her.
He knew what he had to do and he would do it no matter what it cost him. Smug, self-centered jerks like Worf and its crewmates were bound to slip up in their security precautions. At the first opportunity, he would put a permanent end to their playing around with living, thinking beings as if they were bugs in a test tube.
But first, to convince Worf that he would tell it the truth, John had to let it play with him a little longer. The prospect of suffering through more torture didn’t faze him at all.
While his heart had splintered from one loss too many, his body felt completely numb.
Go back to C hapter 1.
Title: The Specimen Strikes Back
Author: nacinom
Rating: PG13
Characters: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, drama
Spoilers: Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"
Chapter word count: 2638 (Chapter 4 of 10-ish)
Disclaimer: The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit.
Summary: The team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to coolbreeze1 for the very cool pic prompt and to my super beta editors:
amycat8733 and firedew1.
Written for: The sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge----------------------------
Chapter 4
John regained consciousness when he felt himself being rotated like a chicken splayed on a rotisserie. The frame’s motion triggered another bout of nausea. He opened his mouth and took a deep slow breath to stop the urge to upchuck whatever was left in his stomach. Not a smart move-he had forgotten about the foul air. Instead of retching, he coughed, a dry hacking that pulled at his sore stomach muscles.
Once he had been repositioned face up, with feet and head on the same level plane, the whole contraption locked into place. The jolt rekindled the pain from all his injuries. There were some, in mighty uncomfortable places, that he couldn’t account for based on what he remembered had been done to him. Be grateful for small mercies his grandmother used to say, mostly about all sorts of things that hadn’t made any sense to him when he was a little kid.
Once he stopped coughing, he realized that the room was perfectly quiet. The various torture implements were not turned on at the moment and the temperature was not as chilly as it had been. These had to be good things. Maybe Nana had been right.
He opened his eyes. Bright pink lights blinded him. Even though he immediately snapped them shut, a stinging sensation brought down a few tears. Spots of light continued to blaze through his firmly shut eyelids as though they had been burned onto his retinas.
Just as he had done all the other times he had come back to his senses, he pulled at the restraints in the hope that they had been miraculously loosened.
No such luck.
His body was a patchwork of different kinds of pain. Topping off the list of most annoying were the pulsing fire that enveloped his left arm, the headache that continued to pound his skull, the dozens of injection sites that stung like acid, and the intense cramps that shot through his arms and legs at random times.
Maybe he had also suffered brain damage because no matter how hard he wracked his brain, he couldn’t come up with a single, even remotely viable escape plan. Practically blind and shackled from head to ankle, he had nothing to work with.
The assurance of the leave no one behind policy provided no comfort because as far as he knew all his teammates were in as bad or worse trouble than him. To top it off, there hadn’t been any time to send Intel back to Atlantis about this mother of all FUBARed missions. By now they had definitely missed their last scheduled check-in. Elizabeth might have already sent Lorne on a search and rescue mission, where they would have come up with no clues as to their whereabouts.
He got yanked out of his funk by a series of loud clacks coming from the far side of the room. It sounded like multiple pairs of high heels walking on a hardwood floor. Buck up. You got company, he told himself.
The sound temporarily stopped and was replaced by a light tapping, possibly fingers hitting a keyboard. When the advancing clicking steps resumed, the temperature dropped quickly to its previous frigid level.
John shivered from the burst of cold air on his naked skin.
The steps stopped very close to his left side. John got a whiff of a sulfur smell strong enough to overpower the underlying formaldehyde-bleach scent of the air. Even the Wraith didn’t smell this bad.
To avoid being blinded by the lights again, he peered through his eyelashes. Above him, the pink lights had been dimmed so that he could see the light fixtures recessed within the rows of small mirrored square panels that completely covered the arched ceiling. The reflections were tiny and distorted. The best that John could figure was that the being looming next to him, outside the reach of his peripheral vision, had a golden head and lime green clothes. Or was it skin or fur?
It spewed out a rapid fire stream of guttural syllables. Maybe he was being ethnocentric, but to John it sounded like a weird remix of Klingon and either Russian or German. Of course that made him decide to call his captor Worf, even though Worf had been a good guy and this one-whether it was male, female or whatever-definitely was up to no good.
No cultural misunderstanding could possibly justify what he had been subjected to.
As soon as Worf stopped talking, a gender-neutral, toneless voice from the other side of the room said, “It is good that you are finally awake. The results of your analysis are aberrant; you must answer my questions.”
John skipped protesting the choice of “analysis” as a euphemism for medical torture and went right into pondering about what had just happened. Obviously, Worf & Co. had a universal translator of some sort, no funky (and hard to understand even for his Mensa-level intelligence) stargate-induced common-language effect around here. This implied that he had not been carried through a stargate and that he was not in some sort of secret facility that had somehow escaped first the MALP and then Rodney’s meticulous scans of the planet. The simplest explanation had to be that he was on a spaceship, a very alien one.
“Who are you?” he said. The rawness in his throat made him sound as raspy as a twenty-pack-a-day smoker or like the device that promptly translated his question in Worf’s language.
A whirling sound startled him. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, his previous sessions had trained him to associate that sound with pain.
He steeled himself to being hurt again.
Instead, a spray of liquid hit his dry, cracked lips. It tasted like water. He licked and swallowed all the moisture within his reach. Not at all dignified, but necessary.
More guttural sounds from Worf before the translator kicked in and said, “I will ask the questions and you will answer.” The mechanical voice paused with a theatrical flair before it continued. “What is your planet of origin?”
John picked the first thing that came to mind. “The place where you kidnapped me.”
As the translator did its thing, John wondered how accurate it was. Rodney’s primary concern would have been to figure out how it worked.
“That is false,” Worf said. “Genomic sequencing and single nucleotide polymorphism analyses indicate that you bear a very distant kinship with the other warm-blooded, bipedal sentient specimens we collected from that planet.”
That was impressive. The translator definitely had a very rich vocabulary, complete with plausible sounding scientific verbiage. John’s mind practically buzzed as it processed the bits of useful information mixed in with the technical mumbo jumbo. “Collected specimens? Who the hell are you?”
“Our identity is of no consequence to you. Suffice it to say, one of our missions is to carry out a comprehensive, intergalactic astrobiological survey of sentient and protosentient species. That is why we have captured you. If you want to regain your freedom, you must truthfully answer my questions. Where is your planet of origin?”
John suppressed the impulse to protest the legitimacy and morality of any sentient species collecting and experimenting on others. Undoubtedly that argument would fall on deaf ears or whatever sensory appendage Worf used for listening. He said, “Athos.”
“That is also false. We have collected numerous specimens from that planet, including the one we captured with you. You do not share sufficient haploidentity to support a claim of genetic kinship with the Athosians.”
John felt a mixture of relief and fear at this confirmation that Teyla had been snagged too. He had to find a way to make sure she was safe. “My parents were culled by the Wraith when I was a little kid and the Athosians took me in. I don’t remember where I came from originally.”
Warned by the loud steps, John acted unfazed by the large head covered in golden fur that suddenly loomed over him.
This feigned nonchalance was hard. Worf didn’t look like anything he had imagined. The best thing was that there was nothing bug-like or otherwise scary about him. The first analogy that popped into John’s head was of a goat or sheep with an incredibly developed, multi-lobed cranium and very tiny ears. Its pelt-covered face sported a short snout flanked by a pair of big, orange oval eyes with rhombus-shaped pupils. It wore a long-sleeve tunic without any visible buttons or zippers.
“Why do you insist in telling falsehoods? That story is a common one in this quadrant, but it is not true in your case.” The translator seemed to be working faster now. In perfect timing with the end of the sentence, Worf raised one arm to give John a brief glimpse of the small device it held between its seven long furry fingers.
Before John could close his fist, Worf splayed his fingers open as it placed the device into his palm. As soon as it touched his skin, John felt the familiar hum of Ancient technology. It was the life-sign detector he carried in a pocket of his tac-vest.
“Your activation of this instrument confirms the results of our phylogenetic analyses which indicate that you are a direct descendant of the Alterans who disappeared from this galaxy ten thousand years ago, presumably exterminated by the Wraith. Your existence is proof that they were not vanquished.” Worf took the life-sign detector away and waved a small round object in front of his nose.
John recognized his transmitter, now sporting a cracked casing and protruding filaments. It was broken beyond repair.
Worf continued with his lecture. “Moreover, this device that we removed from your arm, as well as your clothing and gear, contain elements not found in this galaxy. Finally, elemental analysis of your body fluids and biopsy samples from your major organs demonstrate traces of molecules and isotopes not endemic to this galaxy. All of these data irrefutably indicate your provenance from another part of the universe. Therefore I posit that a sizable group of Alterans fled from this galaxy and settled somewhere else where they bred sufficiently to produce progeny such as you.”
“I don’t know anything about Alterans,” John said. He wondered how well his feigned innocence would translate. Odds were high that once again his ATA gene had landed him in very deep doo-doo.
“What you know or do not know remains to be determined. This will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of my generation. You must l tell me where you are from if you want to earn your life and your freedom.”
“Okay, you got me. I am going to tell you about my real planet,” John said, deciding to switch tactics. “But before I tell you anything, I want to see my companion to make sure she’s alright.”
Worf made an obnoxious honking sound that went untranslated. John suspected that it was a laugh.
Then Worf grabbed his left arm and squeezed. John bit his lip to clamp down a yell. Somewhere under that fur, there were some mighty sharp claws or fingernails.
It leaned over him, giving him a prime view of the neat double row of teeth and blue tongue inside the lipless mouth as it spoke, spraying him with spittle that stung his skin. It did not release his arm until the translator had finished relaying the message, “You are in no position to make demands.”
“Okay, let me explain something to you in simple to translate words.” John waited for the translator to finish with that sentence before he continued. “I’m not going to tell you anything until I see her.”
They stared at each other until Worf stepped away where John couldn’t see him. There was a long pause in their friendly chat while Worf tapped away at something, maybe a computer keyboard, and spoke presumably with someone through a communication device. Given the loud way these people moved around, John felt certain that there wasn’t anyone else in the room. He could hear only Worf’s side of the conversation and the universal translator stayed quiet. Then, Worf stomped around the room, pulled open a couple of squeaky cabinets or drawers, and rummaged through some noisy objects.
John spent the time coming up with a plausible story to convince it that he needed Teyla’s help to provide the requested information. Somehow he also had to talk Worf into freeing him from the restraints. He didn’t think that it would be very hard since in his current position it would be impossible for him to show them his home planet’s position on any kind of star chart, whether it was on a computer monitor, holograph or whatever other form they used for navigation. Also, the way he was already hurting, it shouldn’t be too hard to look harmless. Honestly, he wasn’t positive that he could stand up on his own two feet right now, but if it meant a chance for escape, he would find a way.
Once together, he and Teyla would be able to overpower their captors.
Worf resumed his position next to John. It held a multipronged metal instrument in its hand. “It is unfortunate, but I cannot accommodate your request to see your companion. If you value your life and want to avoid suffering additional pain and injury, you will answer my questions without further delay.”
John wasn’t afraid for himself, he was worried for Teyla. “Look, I have to see her because she has some of the information you want.”
“I believe that my colleague has erred in disposing of your companion so quickly. She would have been useful as leverage for your cooperation.” Worf snapped a thin serrated blade onto one of the arms of the instrument. “I have other ways to convince you to answer my questions truthfully. I do not mind gathering more data on the mechanism of action and limitations of your species’ pain receptors.”
While the not so subtle treat washed over him like it was nothing, John felt as if someone had just stabbed him in the gut. “What do you mean dispose? Where is she?”
“Your companion was Athosian, a subtype that we have already extensively studied. She had no value as a survey specimen and her body mass index did not meet the minimal criteria for our other ongoing experiments. Therefore, she was terminated and recycled to fuel our bioorganic processor.”
Worf continued talking, but John tuned him out. He kept on replaying in his mind the words that told him in no uncertain terms that Teyla was dead.
The thought of escape left his mind.
All he could think about now was revenge. He hadn’t felt such boiling fury since the Genii siege of Atlantis when Kolya had told him that he had killed Elizabeth.
Worf’s associate had thrown Teyla away like garbage to be used for compost and Worf acted as if this was just a minor inconvenience to earning its people’s equivalent of a Nobel prize. No matter how much it hurt right now, John didn’t have the luxury to let himself grieve for her.
He knew what he had to do and he would do it no matter what it cost him. Smug, self-centered jerks like Worf and its crewmates were bound to slip up in their security precautions. At the first opportunity, he would put a permanent end to their playing around with living, thinking beings as if they were bugs in a test tube.
But first, to convince Worf that he would tell it the truth, John had to let it play with him a little longer. The prospect of suffering through more torture didn’t faze him at all.
While his heart had splintered from one loss too many, his body felt completely numb.
Go back to C hapter 1.