FIC: Zymotic (4/12)
Chapter 4
Jack spent the majority of the next three days trying to find other ways of escape, but he found it difficult to stray very far away from Marzun for more than a minute or two at a time. Marzun had taken it upon himself to act as Jack’s bodyguard - or perhaps babysitter, since he seemed to feel that Jack was acting like a wandering child - so wherever Jack went, there Marzun was.
“You must not walk these corridors alone,” he told Jack at least a dozen times. “It is much too dangerous, for yourself and for others.”
Jack had never been one to diss the buddy system, but it sure wasn’t easy trying to scout the place with Marzun constantly at his side telling him to go back to their quarters.
Not that the man’s presence never came in handy. When Jack thought he saw Carter standing on the other side of the entrance tunnel’s force shield and flashed back to SG-1’s unfortunate experience with the Atoniek armbands, Marzun managed to pull him away from the shield before his kicking against it made the guards nervous enough to open fire. Jack owed him his life for that one. It made him realize how much worse this place could be if he didn’t have someone sane to look out for him… and how much he was going to miss Marzun when he died.
The thought of Marzun’s impending death lingered at the back of Jack’s mind at all times. He woke up half a dozen times a night, usually from nightmares or hallucinations, and the first thing he did was look over to Marzun’s corner of the room to make sure he was still breathing. He dreaded the thought of being left alone, especially if he never found a way out.
He often wondered what the rest of his team were doing. Had they been allowed to go home? Were they looking for him? Bargaining for his freedom? Had they enlisted Fraiser’s help in finding a cure for whatever the hell this disease was? He wondered if they’d even been told about this so-called colony. It sure hadn’t been mentioned to them before Jack had found himself inside it. Maybe they’d been told that he was dead. That seemed to be what even those in the colony believed, so why should the planet’s leaders tell his team any different?
No, he realized, he shouldn’t count on being rescued. He became more determined than ever to break out of this place, if it was the last thing he ever did. He’d been in enough prisons already in his life. He didn’t want to die in one.
Unfortunately, scouting the colony for possible escape routes meant coming in contact with the majority of its inhabitants. Some of the folks seemed friendly enough, like Marzun only not quite so openly trusting of the newcomer, but others were what Jack assumed Marzun had been referring to when he mentioned those with “weak minds.” People who seemed lost in their own heads all the time, not just during the occasional hallucination or flashback. Those people Jack tried to avoid at any cost. You could never tell when they were likely to explode in a fit of rage or panic.
He hadn’t seen or heard from the man named Jumas since his first night there, but he occasionally overheard people talking about him in hushed tones. He’d halfway hoped that Jumas had been the one to catch the guards’ gunfire that night, but apparently that wasn’t the case. It had been a woman who had deliberately stepped into the force shield, and from what Jack could gather she had only been in the colony for a matter of days.
“The first few weeks are always the hardest,” he heard an old woman wisely say as he waited behind her in the rations line. “They just do not realize that it gets easier as you near the end.”
Jack watched with hardened eyes as her friends loaded the same old woman’s body into the incinerator the next day. He wasn’t sure whether to feel sad or relieved for her sake. All he did know was that he was going to make sure he wasn’t around long enough to find himself in her position.
He drifted off to sleep that night pondering how long it might take him to dig his way out. If no other options presented themselves soon, he would have to get started if he hoped to make it out before the disease took his life. He knew it was extreme, but he was willing to do anything.
Even to believe in the impossible.
“Sir? Sir, wake up.”
Jack grunted and cracked his eyes open at the sound of a familiar whisper. “Carter?” he slurred.
“It’s me, sir. Are you alright?”
Jack blinked and sat up, shooting a concerned glance over at Marzun to make sure he was still alive. “I’m great, Carter,” he said. “Thanks for the visit, but I’m kinda tired right now, so… if you’d like to reschedule, just talk to my…”
“O’Neill,” Teal’c’s deep voice rumbled from the direction of the door. “We do not have much time.”
Jack looked at Carter in confusion. “Carter?” he said, starting to wonder for the first time whether she might actually be real.
“I’m here, sir,” she said. “It’s really me. You’re not hallucinating.”
Jack slowly reached out a hand to touch her arm, and grasped it like a lifeline when he found that it was solid. He laughed out loud with joy and clambered to his feet. “Am I glad to see you guys,” he said, feeling more relieved than he’d ever felt in his life.
“Shhh,” Carter hissed, gesturing to Marzun. “We’re under strict orders to extract you and only you, sir. We can’t let anyone else know that there’s a way out of here or there will be a mass exodus, and hundreds of people on the surface will die.”
Jack nodded and quickly collected himself. “Lead the way,” he said.
Carter ushered him out of the room, where Jack found Teal’c and Daniel waiting for them out in the corridor. He wordlessly greeted them both with a thankful smile, and followed their lead through the main square and down one of the dark tunnels.
Jack had been down this tunnel many times and never found a way to escape through it, but he trusted that his team knew what they were doing. As far as he knew, it contained only private rooms, but he should have known that any escape route would be well hidden. After all, if one were plainly visible, everyone would have escaped long before he ever arrived there. He scoffed at his own stupidity. How could he ever have believed that he could make it out of here on his own?
“Right through here, sir,” Carter said, pointing to the door at the end of the tunnel.
Jack felt a thrill of excitement as he reached for the handle. He was almost there. He could feel freedom waiting for him on the other side of this door…
A low, canine-like growl stopped him dead in his tracks as he swung the door open. At first he didn’t understand what it could be, but then his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He hadn’t found freedom after all… it was just another room.
Jumas’ room.
Jack glanced over his shoulder, hoping for help from his friends, but they were nowhere to be seen. Reality settled over him like a wet blanket. Hallucinations. He should have known they were only figments of his imagination. Why hadn’t he known?
A wave of panic washed over him as he turned back to Jumas, who was staring right at him with wild, hungry eyes. He wanted to run, but he was afraid that would just make Jumas even angrier. Instead he slowly leaned forward and reached out his hand for the door handle, hoping he could pull it closed before Jumas decided to spring into action.
Too late. Before Jack had time to react, Jumas roared and leapt at him, knocking him down onto the ground.
Jack cried out and tried to wrestle the man away, but Jumas was almost inhumanly strong. He scratched at Jack’s face and upper body with his long, claw-like fingernails, snapping his yellow teeth ferociously as he snarled and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog. Jack managed to clamp his hands around Jumas’ throat and tried to choke him, but that just seemed to make the guy even crazier. He dug his claws into Jack’s arms until Jack shouted in pain and released his hold. Then he swatted the side of Jack’s head so hard that he momentarily lost consciousness.
When he came to, Jumas was dragging him further into the room by his legs. Jack flipped over onto his stomach and tried to crawl away, but again Jumas was too quick for him. He growled and snapped and grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt with both hands. He lifted him effortlessly off the ground and tossed him against the wall. Jack fell to the ground in a crumpled heap, and decided it would be in his best interest to stay that way and play dead.
“God, please, just let it be over.”
Jack groaned as the snapping and snarling morphed into someone screaming Arabic obscenities at him. He may not have known much of the language, but he knew cursing when he heard it. “Yeah, bite me,” he mumbled. He doubled over and covered his face with his chained hands when he received yet another kick to the stomach. “Why the hell don’t you just kill me?” he muttered into the floor.
The Iraqi guard obviously heard him, because the next kick seemed twice as hard and knocked the wind right out of him. This was it… he was dying. He was surprised to find that it was almost a relief. He was just sad that he wasn’t going to see Sara one last time…
“Jumas! Jumas, you must stop!”
Jack dragged his sluggish mind back to the present just in time to see Marzun charge into the room waving a heavy-looking stick. Jumas moved slowly away from Jack and took to pacing back and forth on the far side of the room, his eyes trained warily on Marzun as though he wasn’t sure what to make of this second intruder.
“Are you able to stand, Jack?” Marzun asked calmly.
Jack flexed his legs and found that they still worked, so he nodded and attempted to stand. He winced when the motion caused a shooting pain in his abdomen, and almost keeled over when a wave of dizziness swept over him, but he somehow made it to the door without Jumas trying to stop him. He hurried out of the room and leaned against the wall of the corridor for a moment’s rest as Marzun closed the door behind them.
“We must hurry,” Marzun said, taking Jack’s arm and draping it across his shoulders. He then wrapped his arm around Jack’s waist, and helped to support his weight as they headed back to their own room.
As they passed through the square, Jack could have sworn he saw Daniel standing in the shadows looking worried and pale. “Yeah, no thanks to you,” Jack said under his breath. He couldn’t believe he’d been so gullible as to believe that SG-1 had really managed to sneak into this place to get him out.
At least he’d learned his lesson and lived to tell about it. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
To be continued...
Jack spent the majority of the next three days trying to find other ways of escape, but he found it difficult to stray very far away from Marzun for more than a minute or two at a time. Marzun had taken it upon himself to act as Jack’s bodyguard - or perhaps babysitter, since he seemed to feel that Jack was acting like a wandering child - so wherever Jack went, there Marzun was.
“You must not walk these corridors alone,” he told Jack at least a dozen times. “It is much too dangerous, for yourself and for others.”
Jack had never been one to diss the buddy system, but it sure wasn’t easy trying to scout the place with Marzun constantly at his side telling him to go back to their quarters.
Not that the man’s presence never came in handy. When Jack thought he saw Carter standing on the other side of the entrance tunnel’s force shield and flashed back to SG-1’s unfortunate experience with the Atoniek armbands, Marzun managed to pull him away from the shield before his kicking against it made the guards nervous enough to open fire. Jack owed him his life for that one. It made him realize how much worse this place could be if he didn’t have someone sane to look out for him… and how much he was going to miss Marzun when he died.
The thought of Marzun’s impending death lingered at the back of Jack’s mind at all times. He woke up half a dozen times a night, usually from nightmares or hallucinations, and the first thing he did was look over to Marzun’s corner of the room to make sure he was still breathing. He dreaded the thought of being left alone, especially if he never found a way out.
He often wondered what the rest of his team were doing. Had they been allowed to go home? Were they looking for him? Bargaining for his freedom? Had they enlisted Fraiser’s help in finding a cure for whatever the hell this disease was? He wondered if they’d even been told about this so-called colony. It sure hadn’t been mentioned to them before Jack had found himself inside it. Maybe they’d been told that he was dead. That seemed to be what even those in the colony believed, so why should the planet’s leaders tell his team any different?
No, he realized, he shouldn’t count on being rescued. He became more determined than ever to break out of this place, if it was the last thing he ever did. He’d been in enough prisons already in his life. He didn’t want to die in one.
Unfortunately, scouting the colony for possible escape routes meant coming in contact with the majority of its inhabitants. Some of the folks seemed friendly enough, like Marzun only not quite so openly trusting of the newcomer, but others were what Jack assumed Marzun had been referring to when he mentioned those with “weak minds.” People who seemed lost in their own heads all the time, not just during the occasional hallucination or flashback. Those people Jack tried to avoid at any cost. You could never tell when they were likely to explode in a fit of rage or panic.
He hadn’t seen or heard from the man named Jumas since his first night there, but he occasionally overheard people talking about him in hushed tones. He’d halfway hoped that Jumas had been the one to catch the guards’ gunfire that night, but apparently that wasn’t the case. It had been a woman who had deliberately stepped into the force shield, and from what Jack could gather she had only been in the colony for a matter of days.
“The first few weeks are always the hardest,” he heard an old woman wisely say as he waited behind her in the rations line. “They just do not realize that it gets easier as you near the end.”
Jack watched with hardened eyes as her friends loaded the same old woman’s body into the incinerator the next day. He wasn’t sure whether to feel sad or relieved for her sake. All he did know was that he was going to make sure he wasn’t around long enough to find himself in her position.
He drifted off to sleep that night pondering how long it might take him to dig his way out. If no other options presented themselves soon, he would have to get started if he hoped to make it out before the disease took his life. He knew it was extreme, but he was willing to do anything.
Even to believe in the impossible.
“Sir? Sir, wake up.”
Jack grunted and cracked his eyes open at the sound of a familiar whisper. “Carter?” he slurred.
“It’s me, sir. Are you alright?”
Jack blinked and sat up, shooting a concerned glance over at Marzun to make sure he was still alive. “I’m great, Carter,” he said. “Thanks for the visit, but I’m kinda tired right now, so… if you’d like to reschedule, just talk to my…”
“O’Neill,” Teal’c’s deep voice rumbled from the direction of the door. “We do not have much time.”
Jack looked at Carter in confusion. “Carter?” he said, starting to wonder for the first time whether she might actually be real.
“I’m here, sir,” she said. “It’s really me. You’re not hallucinating.”
Jack slowly reached out a hand to touch her arm, and grasped it like a lifeline when he found that it was solid. He laughed out loud with joy and clambered to his feet. “Am I glad to see you guys,” he said, feeling more relieved than he’d ever felt in his life.
“Shhh,” Carter hissed, gesturing to Marzun. “We’re under strict orders to extract you and only you, sir. We can’t let anyone else know that there’s a way out of here or there will be a mass exodus, and hundreds of people on the surface will die.”
Jack nodded and quickly collected himself. “Lead the way,” he said.
Carter ushered him out of the room, where Jack found Teal’c and Daniel waiting for them out in the corridor. He wordlessly greeted them both with a thankful smile, and followed their lead through the main square and down one of the dark tunnels.
Jack had been down this tunnel many times and never found a way to escape through it, but he trusted that his team knew what they were doing. As far as he knew, it contained only private rooms, but he should have known that any escape route would be well hidden. After all, if one were plainly visible, everyone would have escaped long before he ever arrived there. He scoffed at his own stupidity. How could he ever have believed that he could make it out of here on his own?
“Right through here, sir,” Carter said, pointing to the door at the end of the tunnel.
Jack felt a thrill of excitement as he reached for the handle. He was almost there. He could feel freedom waiting for him on the other side of this door…
A low, canine-like growl stopped him dead in his tracks as he swung the door open. At first he didn’t understand what it could be, but then his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He hadn’t found freedom after all… it was just another room.
Jumas’ room.
Jack glanced over his shoulder, hoping for help from his friends, but they were nowhere to be seen. Reality settled over him like a wet blanket. Hallucinations. He should have known they were only figments of his imagination. Why hadn’t he known?
A wave of panic washed over him as he turned back to Jumas, who was staring right at him with wild, hungry eyes. He wanted to run, but he was afraid that would just make Jumas even angrier. Instead he slowly leaned forward and reached out his hand for the door handle, hoping he could pull it closed before Jumas decided to spring into action.
Too late. Before Jack had time to react, Jumas roared and leapt at him, knocking him down onto the ground.
Jack cried out and tried to wrestle the man away, but Jumas was almost inhumanly strong. He scratched at Jack’s face and upper body with his long, claw-like fingernails, snapping his yellow teeth ferociously as he snarled and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog. Jack managed to clamp his hands around Jumas’ throat and tried to choke him, but that just seemed to make the guy even crazier. He dug his claws into Jack’s arms until Jack shouted in pain and released his hold. Then he swatted the side of Jack’s head so hard that he momentarily lost consciousness.
When he came to, Jumas was dragging him further into the room by his legs. Jack flipped over onto his stomach and tried to crawl away, but again Jumas was too quick for him. He growled and snapped and grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt with both hands. He lifted him effortlessly off the ground and tossed him against the wall. Jack fell to the ground in a crumpled heap, and decided it would be in his best interest to stay that way and play dead.
“God, please, just let it be over.”
Jack groaned as the snapping and snarling morphed into someone screaming Arabic obscenities at him. He may not have known much of the language, but he knew cursing when he heard it. “Yeah, bite me,” he mumbled. He doubled over and covered his face with his chained hands when he received yet another kick to the stomach. “Why the hell don’t you just kill me?” he muttered into the floor.
The Iraqi guard obviously heard him, because the next kick seemed twice as hard and knocked the wind right out of him. This was it… he was dying. He was surprised to find that it was almost a relief. He was just sad that he wasn’t going to see Sara one last time…
“Jumas! Jumas, you must stop!”
Jack dragged his sluggish mind back to the present just in time to see Marzun charge into the room waving a heavy-looking stick. Jumas moved slowly away from Jack and took to pacing back and forth on the far side of the room, his eyes trained warily on Marzun as though he wasn’t sure what to make of this second intruder.
“Are you able to stand, Jack?” Marzun asked calmly.
Jack flexed his legs and found that they still worked, so he nodded and attempted to stand. He winced when the motion caused a shooting pain in his abdomen, and almost keeled over when a wave of dizziness swept over him, but he somehow made it to the door without Jumas trying to stop him. He hurried out of the room and leaned against the wall of the corridor for a moment’s rest as Marzun closed the door behind them.
“We must hurry,” Marzun said, taking Jack’s arm and draping it across his shoulders. He then wrapped his arm around Jack’s waist, and helped to support his weight as they headed back to their own room.
As they passed through the square, Jack could have sworn he saw Daniel standing in the shadows looking worried and pale. “Yeah, no thanks to you,” Jack said under his breath. He couldn’t believe he’d been so gullible as to believe that SG-1 had really managed to sneak into this place to get him out.
At least he’d learned his lesson and lived to tell about it. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
To be continued...