cat_77 | SGA: Found

Title: Found

Genre: SGA, Gen, Hurt/Comfort

Rating: PG-13 for language and implied violence

Season/Spoilers: Ronon’s in it.

Synopsis: His people were more than numbers; they were his friends.

Disclaimer: I don’t own them, people with a lot of money do. I’m just borrowing them and making no profit from the experience.

Edit: It's been suggested I add a disclaimer about horror/disturbing imagery... There you go. Sorry about that, I honestly did not think about it.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Where are they?” Sheppard demanded. The gun was cocked and heavy in his hand, his finger on the trigger tightening just so. It would be so easy to finish it, to put this miserable excuse for a life out of his misery, but he needed him, for now.

“Found them!” Ronon’s voice echoed through the stone and metal hallways. The hint of his dreadlocks swung around the corner as he directed, “They’re in here.”

Sheppard resisted the urge to shoot the man cowering before him just on principle, ordering instead, “Bring him, we might need him.” Two of the Marines obligingly grabbed the man by the elbows and dragged him along as the followed the Satedan.

They stopped in front of a locked door, a barred window set just above comfortable height for the Colonel. “Are you sure?” he asked Ronon.

“I can see them,” the other man confirmed. He glared at the captive man. “They don’t look good.”

“How do we get in?” Sheppard asked. The scorch marks around the metal showed that his teammate had already tried the obvious route.

Their hostage raised his chin in defiance, saying nothing. Ronon made a single step towards him, causing him to flinch back and lose the act. “The... the card,” he stuttered.

Ronon grabbed an octagonal slip of a strange metal hanging from the man’s belt, taking a small amount of pride in the fact he could see the man visibly tremble at his proximity. He should be scared. He was the only one of his kind left standing in the entire compound.

The card was swiped and a display screen appeared. “It needs my code,” the frightened man explained, reaching slowly towards a circular keyboard. He typed in a short sequence and a beam scanned across his hand. The orange light turned blue and the door swung open.

Ronon had warned him, but Sheppard was still not prepared for the site that met him. There, in the center of a stark white room, were his two remaining teammates, tied down to what looked to be some sort of hospital gurneys. Gone were their uniforms, replaced by drab gray gowns, revealing line after line of puncture marks and congealing thin lines of blood. Clear tubes of various colored liquids ran from an assortment of machines into a jumbled mess ending at insertion points both on their arms and under the thin fabric they wore.

“Get a medic,” John growled, stepping closer. “I want them unhooked and on the way to the infirmary now!”

A corpsman obligingly came forward to assess the situation, keying his radio to report back to the Jumpers to carry through to Atlantis to warn them what they were in for. “It’s just nutrients,” the hostage offered. “Well, mostly. All can be unhooked without harm. Just let me...”

He was cut off by a whimper from one of the beds. “No more. You were just here, what else could you possibly take? Please, no more,” Rodney whispered.

“Shh, all will be well,” Teyla sounded from the next bed. Her voice was harsh, either from disuse or too much use, and she swallowed as if it hurt just to speak. “You are strong, remember? We can do this.”

John broke from his hardass routine, knowing Ronon was there to continue with the intimidation factor until they could get out of this place. “Rodney? Teyla? We’re here, it’s us,” he said softly, stepping between the two beds and letting his P90 hang from its strap.

He got worried when neither seemed to look towards him. There was a soft buzzing sound in the room, but he was certain he spoke loud enough to be heard above it. He turned to Teyla and brushed the tangled mess of her hair away from her eyes. She blinked, but still did not turn towards him. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, but he was already pretty certain of the truth. Nothing. Her gaze never changed from a blank stare centered roughly on the ceiling above her. “Teyla?” he tried again, just a little bit louder, reaching down to lightly stroke her hand.

“John?” she asked, her breath hitching. “Is it really you?” Her hand grasped upwards the little it was allowed with her bonds, grabbing his fingers and squeezing with a fraction of the strength he was used to.

“It’s me, Ronon, and a squad of Marines,” he assured her. “We’re going to get you the hell out of here, okay?”

“John? I can’t see,” she told him unnecessarily.

“I know,” he said sadly. “But we’re going to get you back to the base and into Carson’s care, okay? He’ll know what to do.” He tried to sound reassuring, but taking in her ashen features, the obvious wounds, it was hard to muster a lot of positive thinking at this point.

“Rodney,” she gasped. “You have to get him out of here. They want the gene. They want anyone different. They experiment. They have this device...” Her voice started cracking, her pitch rising in her excitement.

“Shh,” he tried to comfort her. “We’re getting you both out of here.”

“Ronon,” she said suddenly. “Is he with you?”

“I’m here,” the Satedan’s deep voice growled.

“You cannot let John touch their machines. No one with the gene. It scans you, poisons you...” she tried to explain.

“Our machines only scan for abnormalities,” the prisoner insisted. “It isolates and incapacitates the individual until we can determine whether the abnormality is beneficial or detrimental. That is all we were doing here, examining the extent of their genetic mutations and seeing if they were viable for our population.”

“Genetic?” Sheppard questioned before it all slipped into place for him. Rodney, like him, now had the ATA gene. Teyla had Wraith DNA added to her own. They were the perfect lab rats for the supposed geneticists.

“We just wanted to study them,” the man explained.

“You tortured them!” John exploded.

“Patients 5468 and 5469 were the first we had encountered with these specific traits. We just wanted to know more...”

John cut him off, really not wanting to know. “Their names are Rodney and Teyla and they are human beings,” he said slowly, voice dripping with malice. “More importantly, they are my teammates and my friends.”

“Sheppard?” Rodney whispered from his bed. “Is it really you?” He turned his head slightly to the side and John tried really hard to ignore the pinpricks of red surrounding his shadowed, but thankfully still seeing, eyes.

“It’s me, Rodney,” he assured him. He moved towards him, but found his hand still held in place by Teyla’s grip.

Ronon saw what was happening and stepped forward, a single look directing the Marines to keep the would-be scientist away from his friends. Ever so gently, he placed his large hand on top of hers, enveloping it in his own. “It’s me,” he told her. “Sheppard’s going to check on McKay and I’m going to stay right here with you, okay?”

She nodded and reluctantly released her other teammate’s hand. “You are not leaving?” she asked wearily.

“Not even if you want me to,” he assured her, getting the faintest upturn of her cracked lips as a response.

Sheppard moved over to his remaining team member’s side, ignoring the medic frantically removing wires and tubing while taking readings and jotting everything down on a data pad. He took Rodney’s bloodied fingers carefully into his own, trying his best to meet his friend’s glazed gaze. If he thought Teyla had been ashen, Rodney was as pale as the bedding on which he lay. “I’m here, Rodney, right here,” he whispered.

“Going home?” McKay asked, flinching when Corpsman Thomas adjusted a line.

“We’re getting the hell out of here and never coming back,” John assured him. He tried to squeeze his hand, anger flaring as the injured man’s body recoiled slightly.

“I hurt,” Rodney admitted. “Quite a lot, actually.”

Sheppard looked to the medic, who shook his head. “I don’t want to give him anything until we know what they’ve been pumping into him,” he explained.

John nodded in understanding. “We’ll get you home and Carson’ll give you the good stuff,” he promised.

“Will it make me forget this place?” Rodney asked almost plaintively.

John closed his eyes for a moment and bit his lip, hating to see his friend like this, either one of them actually. “Probably not, but after you get out of the infirmary, we’ll get some of the Athosian homebrew and drink until you can’t remember any more.”

“Save enough for me?” Teyla asked from her bed.

“Always,” Ronon assured her.

There was a slight movement on the side of the room as Thomas finally backed away. “Doctor McKay is ready for transport,” he announced. He motioned to two of the Marines who slid into place with a stretcher.

“I’m not leaving until Teyla does,” Rodney told them.

The medic opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off by his commanding officer. “We’ll all leave together, okay?” One look, and the Marines back away.

McKay nodded and seemed to drift for a moment as Thomas moved over to work on Teyla. His eyes snapped back open and he gripped down hard on Sheppard’s hand, remembering, “There was a thing, this little hand held thing. They used it when they accidentally broke my wrist. It heals, kind of like Goa’uld technology. Grab it and see if it can help her eyes.”

Sheppard nodded towards the waiting Marines, who started gingerly digging through the assortment of devices on a small table at the back of the room. “Beckett will need to check it out first,” he warned. “I’m not about to trust anything of theirs without his approval.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” the prisoner piped up. “We use it all the time. The one he’s talking about heals bones. The small one with the two circles on the ends helps with the optic nerves. I’ve used it myself after an unfortunate lab accident.”

“How tragic,” Sheppard said dryly. Turning to the Marines, he ordered, “Grab’em all. There might be something to help and, at the very least, we might find out what was done.” They did as told, stuffing the delicate equipment into their packs.

After a few more moments of relatively quiet waiting, Thomas announced, “We’re ready for transport.”

As Rodney and Teyla were carefully loaded onto stretchers, Sergeant Mintz asked, “What should we do with him, sir?” gesturing towards the native scientist.

“Do we need you to work the equipment?” John asked him.

“Oh, no,” he assured him. “Anyone without abnormalities can work the devices. If you would like, I could key them in to accept your genetic makeup as well,” he offered.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Sheppard winced. He turned towards his men. “Make sure he can’t follow us or set off any alarms. If he tries anything, he’s outlived his usefulness.” They nodded in understanding and moved towards the extremely nervous prisoner.

Sheppard had no idea what they did to him, nor did he particularly care. Instead, he and Ronon accompanied Rodney and Teyla through the maze of hallways and unconscious bodies, out of the compound, and into the waiting Jumpers. He rolled his eyes at the way both Ronon and the Marines kept him and the other ATA carriers away from anything remotely mechanical on the planet, ushering them through until the safety of Lantean technology.

It was a tight squeeze, but they fit both stretchers, the medic, the carrying Marines, Ronon, and John into one Jumper with the remaining rescue group taking the other one home. Sheppard flew, but his attention was only minimally on the controls, knowing it was enough to see them through safely. His main focus, and the focus of the rest of group, was on his two injured teammates, and he knew it would be until he was certain they were safe, sound, and completely healed.

~~~~~~~~~~

The former prisoner listened as the alien crafts flew away, calmly adjusting his hands in their bonds. As expected, he waited only a short while before the wall before him slid open revealing his fellow scientist.

“Jessan, are you unharmed?” Malan asked as she carefully cut away the ties holding him in place.

“Quite,” he assured her, quickly standing and rubbing at his wrists. He moved past her and into the hidden lab.

“Should we check on the others?” she asked, following behind him.

He waived off her concern. “In a moment. I want to make certain that the project was unharmed when the power flow was interrupted during the invasion.”

“I checked it myself,” she promised. “No deviations outside 0.03% norm.”

“Excellent!” he enthused. He turned to her, eyes lit in anticipation. “Just think of it, a Tholassan bred with the benefits of both the Ancestors and the Wraith. If it had not been for patients 5468 and 5469, I would not have even thought it possible to see in my lifetime. If this prototype works, and I am certain it shall, we should be able to begin testing with our own kind within the year.”

“The advancements we will make...” Malan agreed with a heartfelt sigh. “Their arrival truly was a blessing.”

“One that we were not foolish enough to pass up,” he said decisively.

Both paused, taking a moment to enjoy and appreciate their accomplishment. On the screen before them, the little clump of cells grew. It would not be long before the grouping was visible to the naked eye. Artificial womb number 5470D neatly lit beside its predecessors, awaiting the day it would bring forth the new life.

End.

~~~~~~~~~~

Feedback is always welcomed.

SGA: Found

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