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Chapter 43 - The Tangled Web

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xo

Mason awoke with a jolt, his system flooded with adrenaline. He rolled to his stomach, scrambling to get his arms and legs beneath him. He had to move, because that's what you did when someone poured gasoline on you and lit a match. When your entire upper body was covered in fire ants and it was a struggle to breathe.

He clawed at the floor, Nothing was working right.

He had to get up.

His head swimming, his eyes swept the room. Everyone was down. Sheppard, McKay, Ronon …

He caught a glimpse of long, dark blonde hair surrounded by Wraith, disappearing down the corridor. "Jen," he tried to say, though his jaw was clenched so tightly the sound scarcely got through.

God. Pain boiled beneath his skin. His senses were completely overwhelmed. He gasped for air.

Breathe.

Breathe.

What was happening? Shit, what was happening to him?

"Jennifer!" he shouted, desperate.

The shadow of a Wraith fell across his prone form, a pair of boot tips in his face as the Wraith crouched down to study him. Charlie. Cheerful Charlie. Freaking Charlie Tuna and his row of pearly white teeth.

"How very interesting." A hand came toward him. A nail ran down his cheek. "Awake so soon? Highly unlikely."

"Back off," Mason choked viciously. Helpless, he searched for his gun, only to find it had slid across the floor just out of reach.

A drone grabbed Ronon by the legs and dragged him away. Charlie smiled down at him with a sinister mien. No doubt the rest of them were next.

"Circumventing our stunner technology is not easily accomplished. Your people have never shown the aptitude." The Wraith let out a satisfied sigh as they took hold of Sheppard and dragged him away, too.

"A pity we do not have more time. I wonder …" Charlie's head tilted, one side of his smile curling. "What do you suppose the chances are you will be able to do so twice?"

He raised his stunner and shot Mason before he could even scream.

John groaned as he regained consciousness. The familiar sensation of pins and needles stabbed at his feet, hands, face. Pretty much everywhere. It sucked. Judging from the groaning Rodney was doing, he clearly agreed.

"You think, if we get stunned enough times, we'll build up an immunity to it?" John asked, when he could properly feel his tongue again.

Perfectly still, Rodney stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Because we're that lucky."

John glanced around. They were in a proper cell now, signed, sealed, and locked away. No surprise there. The lighting was different. Air smelled different, too. They must've been moved to another deck.

"Ronon?" John called out.

The Satedan's body was sprawled out near his feet, which happened to be in Rodney's line of sight. "Still out cold," the scientist replied, craning his neck just far enough to be sure.

"Doc?"

No answer, not even from Rodney.

"Doc?" he said again, the word more pronounced and urgent as silence chilled him to the bone. He clambered around, uncoordinated as a slug. Rodney was moving, too.

"Capshaw?"

There was a noise from the back corner, a strangled, helpless sound that fueled the mounting dread pounding in John's ears. Capshaw was crouched low, curled into the corner. His muscles were taut, his head bowed, chin tucked in. He was pale and sweaty, breathing rapidly, and …

Holy God.

Black lines ran the length of his neck and arms. Thin, spidery tendrils branched out beneath the skin in a map of the human anatomy. They might have been mistaken for veins, but the placement was wrong. It was all wrong.

"Crap." McKay had a gift for summing things up.

Rodney scooted across the floor. A memory of blood and broken glass leapt to mind, and John thrust out a hand in warning. "Rodney, hang on."

He stopped.

"S'okay," Mason gritted out, lifting his head. "It's … not so bad. Not anymore."

Instead of reassuring him, John took the comment as a sure sign he'd lost his mind.

Rodney, on the other hand seemed to take it as the all clear.

"McK—"

Too late. He was already there, hands out but not quite touching, the picture of calm.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God."

"Got any anesthesia, nurse?" Mason said to Rodney.

"Funny. Where's Keller when you need her, huh?" McKay asked, a hint of panic in his voice.

There was an instant where Mason's expression moved beyond physical pain. His eyes were stricken. "Gone," he said softly. He blinked a few times. His jaw set and his features hardened. "They took her."

"Yeah, I noticed." Rodney was only half paying attention. "I told you. I told you, you had to be careful."

"You … didn't mention stunners."

"Because I didn't think—!" The words spilled out frantically, then Rodney swallowed. "Because I didn't think it needed mentioning, okay? Anyone with half a brain would—"

"What's going on, Rodney?" John interrupted. "What's happening?"

"It's AD-765."

"The thing in Capshaw's chest?"

Rodney nodded. "Remember what it did to my lab?"

Oh, John remembered. One little lightning strike, and it had swallowed an entire room. He had thought that was scary. Given the way the oily black tendrils rippled beneath Capshaw's skin, the way his knuckles clenched white as it was clearly moving within his body, the Ancient gizmo had just gotten a whole lot scarier.

"It was supposed to be safe," John said with a note of accusation.

McKay responded on the defensive. "The device's size changes in proportion to the size of the electrical current it's exposed to. Nervous system output is negligible, and the damage to Capshaw's system remains consistent, so its size remains stable. It's safe. Within normal parameters, it is safe."

John's narrowed eyes burned a hole in Rodney's uniform.

"Look, there are always variables, but it was the best option by far. The device is safe. I never would've recommended it, otherwise."

"From the looks of things, we've wandered outside normal parameters, Rodney."

He huffed. "Fine. Stunners mean extra voltage. Not a lot, but enough to disrupt neurologic function. A brief sensory and motor system overload, leading to a complete short circuit, and you're down. The device feeds on the energy, yes, but the real issue is, at its core, it reads his system as having sustained damage. So what does it do? It uses the energy from the blast to grow. It strangles every neuron in its path, healthy or not, in order to bypass the 'damage' and restore function, which would be fine, except that getting bigger inside a contained environment such as say, I don't know, a human body—"

"—means bad things happen," John finished, allowing Rodney to inhale.

"To put it mildly."

"How bad are we talking?"

"With a big enough charge? Horror movie bad. It could tear him apart."

"I'm okay!" Mason yelled, sharply cutting them off. "I'm fine. This isn't a fucking movie."

"That wasn't really my poi—"

"No!" Mason cut him off quick. "Look."

He held out his arm, the action looking forced and painful. A few tendrils still stretched as far as his elbow, but as they watched, it became apparent that some were on a slow, gradual retreat upward along his bicep. A couple of the smaller branches had greyed out, the least of them fading from view entirely as Mason's gaze pulled away, avoiding their stares. "I'm fine. I think it's pulling back, going back to normal."

"The stun blast must be wearing off," John said.

"I can't believe the reaction was this bad. One shot? I never figured … I didn't think ..." Rodney appeared almost shamefaced. "See, stunners don't actually have that much juice. They have more in common with an EMP than your average stun gun. I never said anything, because … well, it just wasn't that much of a risk."

"They shot me six times."

John and Rodney were both shocked into silence. An ominous quiet swelled as Mason's breaths progressively slowed.

"You saw the first time. The second one was a few minutes later," he continued. "Three was right as we were being loaded into the scout ship. Then, the last three when they dumped us in here. Boom, boom, boom. One on top of the other. Charlie's way of having some fun."

The corner of his mouth twitched to form a grim, distant smile. "They couldn't figure out why I kept waking up. I think I've got their attention now."

His eyes met John's, and a stone formed in John's stomach.

"Wait a minute," Rodney said. "What scout ship? What does that mean?"

Quiet, contemplative, John answered. "I'm pretty sure it means we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Getting Keller back just got a hell of a lot harder."

Mason nodded. "We're on the Queen's Hive."

A little while later, Ronon was finally awake. The Satedan lion was up and pacing by the cell door, while McKay and the Colonel were clustered on the floor with Mason. His condition had stabilized; he looked fully human again. Whether or not he felt that way was up for debate, but he refused to sit around and drool. Not while the Wraith had Jennifer. Not while they were doing God knew what to her. Not when he'd failed so miserably to stop them.

"We're in the wrong place," Mason said. "I managed a peek at one of the monitors on the scout ship. The coordinates were off. I'm not even sure we're in the right system."

"We didn't make it to the rendezvous point," McKay said.

"Makes sense," Sheppard said. "We had another day in hyperspace before we were supposed to arrive."

Ronon's stance was brutal. He seemed ready to wage a war all by himself. "So we're in the wrong place. What do we do now?"

"Did you manage to activate the tracking beacon?" Sheppard asked McKay.

"No, and the remote trigger is gone, along with the rest of our stuff." McKay grumbled, likely more crushed about that than anything. Without his toys, his ability to work up some magic for them was severely handicapped. "We're on our own. The Daedalus isn't coming."

There was a long pause in which the enormity of their dilemma seemed to grow and grow.

"Stranded on a Hive ship, separated from Keller," Sheppard said after a minute, taking inventory in an ominous tone lifted straight from a movie trailer. "Surrounded by Wraith, where no one knows where to find us, and no way to get home."

It broke the tension at least. McKay cast him a withering look. "Was that supposed to be inspiring or make me more likely to hang myself with my shoelaces?"

"I'm just saying that we've done this before. This isn't the first time this has happened, and we made it out okay. Let's not give up yet."

"You're awfully optimistic. Are your new spidey senses telling you something we don't know?"

"We're getting out of here, McKay."

"We have to get Jennifer back," Mason said.

"I know," Sheppard replied, resolute. "We will. We will get her back. It's my fault she's here in the first place."

The Colonel traded a look with Ronon, who glared, his body tense, his features fairly screaming an "I told you so".

Sheppard took the silent reproof and returned his attention to Mason. "Now, tell me everything you saw, everything you heard while we were out."

There wasn't much to tell. Wraith weren't chatty as a rule, thanks to their ability to communicate telepathically with each other. Besides an exchange of greetings upon docking with the Queen's Hive, he was the only thing they'd bothered to discuss aloud. Charlie had realized Mason was awake again and broached the subject of keeping him for study. Leering at him, the Wraith had tried to convince Todd he was worth more time.

Luckily, Todd had other priorities. Apparently, Mason was interesting, but insignificant to the task at hand. They couldn't risk the Queen "detecting further deception on their side or their plan would be for nothing." As if some level of deception was normal. Expected, even. The Wraith probably considered it bad manners to come to the dinner table without an extra knife or two to stick in someone's back. Bad manners or poor planning.

"Further deception?" McKay asked. "What? Kidnapping Jennifer instead of shanghaiing her with the rest of us?"

"I don't know," Mason replied. "Maybe."

Sheppard said, "There's no way to know what Todd has in mind, but at least now we know Todd wasn't lying about his dislike for this Queen. Keller is Todd's ace in the hole. Whatever happens to us, he's still got the information he wants. Keller has everything we know on the Hoffan virus right inside her head. If he's keeping the doc from the Queen, then we reasonably assume he doesn't want her to have it."

McKay crossed his arms. "Good for Jennifer. Not so good for us."

"Nothing about this is good," Ronon growled. "When he gets what he wants from her, he'll kill her just like he would anyone else."

Mason stayed quiet. Maybe his sanity had slipped another rung down the ladder, because he wished Charlie had been allowed to keep him. Experiments or not, on Todd's Hive, he could've located Jennifer. Freed her. Gotten her the hell out of there, and come back for his team somehow. Some way.

Instead, he was here. With a whole different set of problems.

"There are two more Hive ships out there, sitting off our hull. The Queen's allies. Some of them, anyway. Ships we didn't expect." Mason paused. This was too much, even for him. "We're outnumbered. Even if Todd hadn't betrayed us, we'd still be outnumbered."

Even Sheppard took a moment to regroup.

McKay exhaled. "We're so screwed."

"Could be why he betrayed us," Sheppard said.

Ronon eyed him. "Does it matter why?"

Sheppard frowned and took a breath. "Alright. However many of them there are, they aren't here. So what are our options?"

They spent the next several minutes debating. They could escape and commandeer a Dart, only to get shot down the moment they hit space. They could escape, cripple the ship, then commandeer a Dart, only to get shot down by one of the other three Hive ships waiting outside. They could find a way to get the Hives shooting at each other and get blown up in the crossfire. Or get Jennifer blown up. Or both. They could escape, find the ZPM, rig it to overload (therefore keeping it out of the hands of the Wraith), and lacking an exit strategy again, die. They could escape and deploy the weaponized gas they'd brought. That would turn every Wraith on board but the Queen herself into a human, giving them control of this Hive at least. Except it took time for the transmutation to take effect and, small problem, it was still in the Jumper. On Todd's ship. Along with their hazmat suits and Jennifer.

So far, all of their options sucked, likely ended in death, and required an escape from their cell, which was problematic given that Todd's goons had been unusually thorough in disarming them. Ronon didn't even have his handy stash of throwing knives.

McKay was moments away from pronouncing their doom once again, when a Wraith approached their cell. Two drones were on his rear. Present when Mason and the others were brought on board, Mason recognized him as one of the Queen's commanders. He had the characteristic long, white hair, pieces of it braided and tied back, and a wispy, white Imperial on his chin. Unlike Charlie, however, this Wraith's demeanor wasn't fussy. He clearly detested them. He had a hateful, impatient look on his face, and an ugly, grey slash across one cheek, a remnant from some long ago battle.

"Okay. I guess this means we're winging it," Sheppard said. The team all got to their feet.

"You will come with me," the Wraith said.

McKay gulped. "Me? Why? I-I mean, uh … Just me?"

"You and Colonel Sheppard. It is as the Queen wishes."

Sheppard's chin lifted slightly, eyes steady. "Trust me, you don't want him. He'd probably faint before you got a chance to ask your first question."

"It's true," McKay said, nodding rapidly. "I probably would. My pain tolerance is shockingly low."

"It is," Mason said.

Ronon stared hard at the Wraith, no doubt plotting five hundred ways to make him to die.

The Wraith's expression didn't change. "Doctor McKay, you and Colonel Sheppard will accompany me to the Queen's chamber. I would advise against trying her patience as you have mine. And if you faint, I will kill you."

McKay gulped again. "I'll keep that in mind."

Alone in a cell, Jennifer paced. Over the course of a few hours, she'd wrung her hands, chewed her lip, tried to look on the bright side, and started biting her nails again, a habit she'd kicked in junior high.

It was awfully quiet in here.

Where was Rodney when she needed him? Talking all the time, filling the silence with every stray thought that passed through his head. The Colonel and Ronon, too. Mason. Milling around, restless at being cooped up, always watching. Now, it was just her. In a dark, dank hole with nothing else to focus on but the rattlesnakes in her stomach.

Not that she was complaining. She just expected they'd be torturing her by now.

It would've been nice to have some company.

Despite Todd's claims of having things to discuss with her, Jennifer had done most of the talking. "You don't have to do this," she'd said as they led her away. She could talk fast. When pressed, she could give Rodney a run for his money. "I'll help you. I told you I would. You don't need to hurt anyone.

"For that matter, we've been working on a gene therapy that would make it so you wouldn't have to rely on human feeding. We can talk about that. We actually got the idea from Michael. Well, that's what we call him. The one disseminating the Hoffan virus to human worlds. We've run close to a hundred simulations based on full medical scans of the Wraith we've had in ... captivity. They've all been successful. You and your people wouldn't need to worry about the Hoffan virus. No one would have to die. The war would be over."

"When I return, Doctor Keller," Todd said, in his discordant bass, "I have no doubt you will make yourself quite useful to me."

That shut her up. Jennifer had a feeling he wasn't just talking about medical information. She was in more trouble than she thought.

Todd had left her in this cell, and she hadn't seen him since. Where had he gone?

What had happened to throw their plan so wildly off track? Or was this the plan all along?

Jennifer buried her face in her hands and willed herself to stay calm, think rationally. She tried not to think of Mason and the smack of his body hitting the floor. The way he jerked when he got hit, how everything had fallen apart in a second. It had happened so fast. He hadn't even had time to look surprised.

She needed to find a way out of here. She had to get back to her friends. She was reasonably sure she remembered the way. Colonel Sheppard had had her memorize the Hive schematics for just such an eventuality. If Todd betrayed them, she was supposed to take the gas and release it into the air supply.

Her lack of the ATA gene was a problem, though. Even if she managed to get to the Jumper, where it was currently being stored, she would need Rodney or the Colonel to get through the Jumper's shield. And then there was the gas itself. She wasn't about to set loose an airborne biogenetic weapon on the same ship as her friends, when they had no suits to protect them and they weren't in a position to retreat to somewhere safe. The consequences could be disastrous. She wouldn't do that to them.

They hadn't been ready. That's what it all boiled down to. They were supposed to have had one more day. To follow Todd, cloaked, onto the Queen's ship. She would've already been stationed inside the Jumper, hidden from the Queen's minions while the rest of them retrieved the ZPM. She could've radioed them, warned them of what was coming. Given them time to get to safety.

Too late. Too late, now.

It was becoming a recurring theme in her life.

When a tall, burly looking Wraith walked up to her cell, she didn't immediately respond. She assumed he'd come to taunt the pitiful, disgusting human. He'd do so and then leave.

But he didn't.

He stared at her in that special way that made her skin crawl. He was ragged. His facial markings resembled a bullseye, centered on his left cheek. His eyes were crazed, and he had a stunner aimed at her face.

"You will come with me, human," Keith said. It was the first name that came to mind. Colonel Sheppard would've approved.

Inching away, Jennifer checked the corridor for someone else, anyone else. "What do you want?"

Dinner, from the looks of things.

"I require the remaining data on the Hoffan virus."

"I don't know what you were told, but I can't help you."

"Lies."

"I can't." The words echoed in cadence with the rhythm of her heart. "Not by myself. You need Colonel Sheppard's access code along with mine to deactivate the encryption." To say nothing of whatever Rodney had done to it. "I need Colonel Sheppard. The data can't be unlocked without him."

Keith's gaze narrowed, the nose of the gun twisting. "You will come with me, Doctor."

"Take me back to my friends, and you'll get whatever you need."

The Wraith smiled a predatory smile. "You are here for your own safety, Doctor, but your cooperation is required. You will fulfill your purpose or your status is forfeit. Now. Come."

She had a bad feeling about this.

John and Rodney were marched to the Queen's chamber. She was feeding on some poor bastard as they were brought inside. Another corpse already at her feet, her eyes tracked them as she fed, her face an expression of pure ecstasy. The man's body withered to a husk, and she released it with a sigh of pleasure. Bones clacked to the ground.

"More," she told the Wraith commander who'd brought them here. "I require more."

He nodded and left the room. A subtle movement of her chin, and the drone shoved them to the floor at her feet.

John bit back a grunt of pain.

"Ow!" McKay exclaimed. "What happened to condescension, cajoling, and mind control, huh?"

"Easy, Rodney," John muttered under his breath.

"Well, why does being held prisoner have to be so hard on the knees?"

A sudden compulsion flooded John's muscles, his entire being. It weighed him down, forcing him to be still, all his attention forward. The Queen rose from her throne.

She had black hair streaked with white. She was tall and statuesque, like many of the Queens John had met before, and seemed to have a penchant for leather.

On a scale of one to ten, she really wasn't his type.

She touched his face, examining him, cupping his chin to claim his gaze. "You have done well, my Acquisition," she crooned.

John didn't think she was talking to him.

Confirming his hunch, Todd stepped from the shadows behind the throne. The drones positioned strategically around the room remained at attention as she moved to examine Rodney as well. "They are yours, my Queen. They and their companions possess all of the knowledge you seek."

"Excellent. Once we have the coordinates to their homeworld, the Lantean power source will be all that is needed. Our numbers will multiply. We will be able to travel at speeds far beyond our current capability. We will be unstoppable."

Son of a bitch.

McKay shouted at Todd, his body rigid, still held fast by the compulsion. "No. Uh uh. No way. I don't believe it. There's no way you faked those readings. It's impossible."

"You never had a ZPM, did you?" John said. "We're just here to secure your new alliance."

The Queen's grip tightened on his face. Long, scary nails dug into his skin.

Todd's head tilted slightly, a small smirk on his lips. "Let's not get caught up in unnecessary details."

"Take Doctor McKay to the Module Station," the Queen ordered. "Put him to work. Colonel Sheppard will remain here."

Todd's head bowed. "Yes, my Queen."

When they were alone, John glared up at the Queen. "I won't give you Atlantis. If you want a ZPM, you'll have to find it elsewhere."

The female Wraith gazed at him greedily. "We shall see."

She dove into his mind and squeezed.

The lab on board Todd's ship was both alien and familiar. There were tables and computer consoles. Overhead monitors cycled through data written in Wraith, specimen containers and equipment lined the walls, and there were tissue samples under a scanner.

Probably human, Jennifer thought. Likely infected by the Hoffan virus. Had the samples been harvested during a culling, or were the Wraith were keeping live human subjects from affected worlds on board for testing?

She shuddered. Keith shoved the nose of the stunner into her back and pushed her the rest of the way inside.

A few minutes later, Keith was calling up information at his console. He'd set his stunner down next to his work station. Jennifer kept her gaze forward, only glancing at the weapon in those few milliseconds when she knew his attention was elsewhere. How stupid would it be to go for it? Was she anywhere near fast enough?

The route they'd taken to the lab was oddly circuitous, if the schematics she'd memorized had been accurate. Where was everyone else? Shouldn't there be other Wraith here?

"Your access code, Doctor."

Jennifer set her shoulders and raised her chin in defiance. "I told you, the information on that data drive can't be accessed without Colonel Sheppard's code, as well."

"Colonel Sheppard will be here momentarily. Your code."

Uh ... Now, who was lying?

"I think I'll wait," she said.

Cold, yellow eyes glared at her. "Foolish human. It is far more efficient for me to present the Queen with the information from the data drive, but I am not averse to presenting her with you in its place."

Oh, God.

"But … " she stammered. "Why would you … "

"The Commander of this vessel plans to betray the Queen and the great alliance we could make. He would deceive her and destroy her. I cannot allow it."

"I won't help you," Jennifer said again, her voice steady in spite of the crumbling situation.

Keith laughed. It was short, dismissive, and deep. "You have no choice. You are mine, now. With the Zero Point Module and the information you possess, I will have the Queen's favor. Those who question her will cease their resistance, and this ship and those allied with us will answer to me."

He capped off his grandiose pronouncement by gesturing to an open storage container in the rear of the room, packed and waiting to be sealed. Jennifer's throat went dry.

"The ZPM," she whispered. "He had it the whole time."

"It is your end," Keith said.

Without another thought, Jennifer dove for the stunner.

She didn't make it.

….

Author's Note: Just a reminder, this plot arc takes place during the same time period as "First Contact/Lost Tribe". The Wraith are in a very different place in this AU than in the canon. As always, thanks for reading!