Chapter Text
"Even in a place as swanky as this, a few hundred dollars go a long ways towards opening locked doors," Sheppard said. "Or for finding out which doors you want to unlock." He sat down in the chair, crossed his legs and put the heels of his boots up on the polished metal top of his X-T attaché case. With his pistol he indicated Teyla. "You've locked it?"
Teyla turned back from the room door and nodded.
"Okay, then join him on the bed," Sheppard told her, his gaze shifting between her and Rodney—not a nervous twitch, but smoothly observant, tracking both of them with the ease of experience. A decade of Special Ops was equal to a decade of espionage training, apparently. Sheppard was making them keep their distance exactly, close enough that his semiautomatic wouldn't miss, far enough away that they couldn't jump him.
Teyla sat next to Rodney on the foot of the bed, not quite touching, her hands clasped in her lap, as instructed. Her expression was utterly calm, Rodney saw, glancing at her profile out of the corner of his eye. Whether she was actually unafraid or simply unshakably restrained was anyone's guess.
"Now," Sheppard said, "who are you guys?"
"We might ask you the same question," Teyla said coolly. "You are the one in our hotel room."
Sheppard smiled, a quirk of his loose mouth that looked like it could use more practice. "Fair enough. I'm John Sheppard. I like Ferris wheels, college football, and anything that goes more than 200 miles per hour." His eyes flicked between them again, and he leaned back in the chair. The pistol in his hand stayed steady on them. "But you knew that already."
"Why would we know that already?" Rodney blustered. "You break into our hotel room and hold me and my—my wife at gunpoint, and expect us to know you—what are you, some kind of middle-aged superstar? Or do you simply suffer from delusions of notoriety—if you regularly take medication, I'd advise checking your dose." He leaned forward as he ranted, to press his case, and to change the angle of his hands, so Sheppard wouldn't notice when he drew the handheld computer out from his sleeve where he had slipped it, cupping it in his loosely clasped hands. "We've never seen you before; why would we have any idea who you are?"
"Huh," Sheppard said, "that's interesting, considering how much I've seen of you in the last couple days. You and your...wife," and his lazy drawl imbued the final word with just enough doubt to be insulting. "Everywhere I've gone, one or the other of you has shown up. And then, when I come in here, you've got these," and he tilted his head toward the computer consoles arrayed over the desk and bureau. "I was figuring you might have tapped into hotel security, that's why I was avoiding the cameras. But I didn't expect a set-up like this. It's pretty sweet—unless you're doing it without the hotel's permission, and then it's damn impressive."
"Yes, it is, isn't it," Rodney said automatically, pleased. Teyla elbowed him in the ribs and he coughed. "That is—um—"
"Is it all for watching me?" Sheppard asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Or are you running an open-season blackmail business?"
"Blackmail?" Rodney repeated scornfully. "You think we'd waste these kind of resources on—"
"Because if that's your game," Sheppard said, "I'm afraid you're out of luck with me. Even if I had the money, there's nothing you can get on me that would cause more problems with my brother than I've already got, and otherwise I don't have any reputation to lose."
"We are not blackmailers," Teyla said.
"What, then? Don't tell me Dave's finally gotten sick enough of me to hire pros to knock me off, I won't buy it. Well, probably not. How cheap are your rates?"
"We're not hired killers, either!" Rodney protested. "Jesus, what do we look like, thugs?" Within his cupped hands, he thumbed through the handheld's menus, opening a connection to his primary computer on the desk behind Sheppard. With only a touchpad he couldn't do anything impressive, but he didn't need to now; this had worked well enough with the big guy before...
"So what are you?" Sheppard asked.
Teyla hesitated a moment, then said, "Have you ever heard of the S.G.C.?"
"Seacouver Gambling Commission?" Sheppard hazarded.
"Not quite," Rodney said. "It's a top secret multinational organization, dedicated to preserving the peace via various clandestine operations."
"If it's top secret, why are you telling me about it?"
Rodney sighed and looked at Teyla. "Do you sometimes get the nagging feeling that we might actually be the worst spies ever?"
Teyla kept her gaze on Sheppard. "It has crossed my mind," she said levelly.
Rodney leaned back on the bed, bracing his hands behind him. After the time tied to the chair, the position aggravated his sore muscles, but he tried to make it look as natural as possible. His left hand rested on the mattress behind Teyla, close enough for him to touch her back. The handheld computer was in his right hand, thumb hovering over the activation button.
"So what does the S.G.C. want with me?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney placed three fingers on the small of Teyla's back, then withdrew one. She didn't glance at him, but her spine stiffened imperceptibly as she readied herself for the countdown. "It's not you we want," Rodney answered, as he removed his second finger. "It's what you're doing with what's in that shiny briefcase."
"That?" Sheppard's eyes flicked momentarily down to the attaché case. At the same time, Rodney withdrew his last finger from Teyla's back, and hit the handheld's pad.
The speakers behind Sheppard exploded into a horrible snarling, snorting noise that could have been mistaken for a roll of thunder or the growl of a sabertoothed tiger. It was, in fact, a recording of Sheppard's own snoring, amplified to absurd decibels, but Sheppard didn't know that. He knocked over the X-T case, launching himself out of the chair, eyes not wide with surprise but narrowed in expectation of attack.
But he'd looked away for the crucial moment; Teyla was already in motion. Closing the distance between them in one bound, she grabbed Sheppard's gun hand and wrenched the pistol aside, towards the wall, while pulling her own concealed Walther P22 and putting it to his temple. "Freeze, please."
Sheppard took a breath and let it go, otherwise staying motionless, while Teyla plucked the sidearm from his hand and handed it back to Rodney. Rodney aimed the heavy .45 at its owner as Teyla took her gun from his head and stepped back, but she kept the Walther trained on Sheppard as well.
Sheppard looked at her gun, and Rodney, and said, with another wry quirk of a smile, "So, assassins after all?"
"No, we are not," Teyla said.
"Did you miss the part about preserving the peace?" Rodney said. "We're the good guys. For instance, you'll note that we're not the ones about to sell dangerous military hardware to G.O.A.U.L.D.."
"Who selling what to which, now?"
"We know about Project ATA," Teyla said, with implacable confidence; listening to her, Rodney almost believed they actually did know anything whatsoever about it.
"You do," Sheppard said. "Okay. And...?"
"You're here to sell it off to Kaiba Corporation," Rodney said. "We can't allow that."
Sheppard's eyes narrowed. "So I take it you're the reason Mr. Kaiba didn't make his appointment today."
"Yes," Teyla said.
"Why does a top-secret espionage organization care about what's getting sold to an entertainment company? KaibaCorp's most famous product is a children's card game," Sheppard said. With his laidback drawl he was able to affect ingenuous confusion with ease. Between that and the hair, it was hard to remember how smart the man really was.
"It's not KaibaCorp, it's who is subsidizing them."
"You mean the—what'd you say, Gold? Ghoul?"
"G.O.A.U.L.D.," Rodney said. "The Global Organization of Autocratic Universal Leaders and Deities."
Sheppard's eyebrows shot up, making a break for his absurd hairline. "You're kidding."
"I wish," Rodney said. "We're the good guys, they're the bad guys. The really bad guys. They believe they only have one place in this world, and that's on top, ruling over all the rest of us poor saps. And that's who you're handing Project ATA to, if you go through with this deal."
"As a matter of fact," Sheppard said, "I think you might be misinformed." He reached down, hefted his case into his lap and draped his arms over it. "You can tell your bosses I'm not planning on handing ATA over to anyone—like I already told them."
"Like you told them?" Teyla repeated, but before she could ask she was drowned out by a shrieking siren wail. Rodney ducked instinctively, before belatedly recognizing the hotel's fire alarm.
Both Teyla and Sheppard were looking at him. Rodney raised his hands from the handheld. "It's not me!" Teyla met his eyes, his own question showing in her expression. "If he's after Sheppard..." Rodney said.
"Then he wants him outside, perhaps," Teyla agreed. "So he may have pulled the alarm?"
"Or else set it off for real," Rodney said. Captain Sequoia might be unhinged enough to start a fire to get what he wanted. Even if he wasn't G.O.A.U.L.D., he hadn't displayed any obvious ethical standards.
"Then we must exit the building," Teyla said.
"Yeah," Rodney said. He waved Sheppard's pistol at the man himself, for emphasis. "And if you've got any brains, or at least self-preservation instincts, under that hair, you'll stick with us."
"Sure," Sheppard said, idly, like he didn't have anything better to do, and he picked up the briefcase and followed them out of the hotel room. Rodney secured the door behind them, taking a moment to add an extra encryption to the lock, so no one else could be let in no matter how much cash they waved around.
The stairwells were lit with yellow emergency lights and jammed with people, everybody babbling anxiously under the deafening screech of the alarm. Rodney bulldozed down through the crowd, with Teyla behind him and Sheppard sandwiched between them, Teyla's small concealed Walther making sure he stayed there.
At least it did, until on the third floor landing they were jostled by a panicked pair of honeymooners fighting their way upstream, trying to get back to their room before their pet poodle or family jewels or whatever burned. They almost shoved Teyla over the railing, and Rodney moved to help her, only to be slammed back by the heel of Sheppard's palm direct in his solar plexus.
Winded by the blow almost to the point of blacking out, Rodney barely heard Sheppard mutter in passing, "If you really are the good guys—sorry."
Rodney staggered. Teyla grabbed his arm, dragged him to the corner of the landing, keeping him from falling and being trampled. "Sheppard?" Rodney wheezed.
Teyla shook her head. In the yellow light, her eyes looked black.
"What are the chances Sheppard arranged that alarm himself?" Rodney wondered.
"I cannot guess," Teyla said.
"Oh, yeah," Rodney muttered, rubbing his hands over face. "Landry is going to love this mission report."
"Have you tried tracking Sheppard's cell phone access?" Landry asked.
"Hey, why didn't we think of doing something logical like that, rather than running around the Atlantis's central spire, shouting Sheppard's name? Oh wait, we did think of it, seeing as we're professionals and not complete nincompoops." Rodney ignored the look Teyla threw at him. He remembered the general signed their paychecks, but it had been a very long day. "If he's using a cell now, it's not one contracted under his real name. Sheppard knows we're looking for him, he's gone to ground, and atypically, I don't think we can rely on mind-boggling stupidity on his part to catch him."
"Then you'll just have to be better than him," Landry said. "If Sheppard gets away, with Project ATA—"
"Yes, yes, we know, all of civilization at risk, fire, flood, plague, locusts, et cetera. So what else is new?"
Usually Landry just ignored his sarcasm, but now he gave Rodney a long, serious look over the video feed. Rodney supposed he should try to sound a little more concerned. It wasn't that he didn't care. But they had just been stuck outside in the arid desert evening for almost an hour while the hotel looked into what had been (so the patrons had been assured) a minor electrical fire, nothing to worry about, move along—and failed to find a trace of Sheppard, or the big man after him. And if the hotel happened to re-examine their security because of the fire alarm, odds were that they'd come across Rodney's taps. And Landry was as tight-lipped as ever about why the S.G.C. gave a damn about Sheppard, continuing to deny any knowledge of the particulars of Project ATA, and Rodney was getting a migraine, and biting his tongue just wasn't worth the effort.
Fortunately, that was what he had a partner for. "General Landry," Teyla said, nudging Rodney aside to center herself in the camera's scope, as patient and reasonable as ever, "Sheppard did deny knowledge of G.O.A.U.L.D. And he claimed that he had no intention of selling Project ATA—in fact, he said that he had already told you so? Though we're unsure what he meant by that."
"Ms. Emmagan," Landry said, "as I'm sure you and Dr. McKay are now aware, John Sheppard is a very dangerous man. Whatever his actual plans are for Project ATA, he hasn't revealed them to anyone. You can't expect that anything he said to you, at gunpoint under duress, bore any resemblance to the truth."
"Of course not," Rodney said, thinking of the man's artlessly indolent drawl, too guileless to be real. And then there was the weird apology he'd muttered on the stairwell. "But until we figure out what he's actually up to—"
"It's too late for that." On the computer screen, Landry's round face looked old and worn, drooping at the edges. "Ms. Emmagan, Dr. McKay, you are hereby authorized by the S.G.C., with the sanction of the I.O.A., to use whatever force necessary to stop John Sheppard, up to and including lethal."
"Wait, what—"
Landry's face was tired, but his eyes were hard. "Have I made myself clear?"
Teyla put a hand on Rodney's arm to quiet him. "We understand, General Landry," she said, and reached past Rodney to switch off the video link.
Rodney gaped for several seconds at the blank screen before he found his voice. "What the hell was that?"
"These are not the first such orders we have received," Teyla reminded him evenly.
"Yes, when we're going up against G.O.A.U.L.D. kingpins—Sheppard's just a guy. He's a business tycoon, for god's sake. A business tycoon lugging around some kind of super-weapon, maybe, but still..."
"Whatever Project ATA is," Teyla said, "it frightens the I.O.A. badly."
"Obviously. The question is why." Rodney frowned. "My web-search bots for Project ATA have turned up squat, not even rumors. It'd help if we had any idea what it stood for—I keep ending up on tae-kwan-do and trucking association sites."
"Sheppard does not look like a clandestine trucker to you?" Teyla inquired. When Rodney looked at her, she tilted her lips up just enough and no more.
Rodney snorted. "It'd be better for him if he was." He drummed his fingers on the desk. "Ironic, isn't it? In a horrible way. We just told the guy we weren't assassins, and now..."
"What it comes down to," Teyla said, "is whether we trust the S.G.C. to give us the right directives, even if not complete information."
"Yeah," Rodney said. "And isn't that a bitch." He spun his chair around to face his partner directly. "So do you? Trust them?"
Teyla hesitated, just long enough for Rodney to see it. "I trust people in the S.G.C.."
"Is Landry one of them?"
Teyla inclined her head in an assured way that might have been a nod, but really was no answer whatsoever. "And you, Rodney, do you trust them?"
"You know I don't trust anyone. Especially anyone who works for the government. Any government," Rodney said. "But it's not like Sheppard's any more trustworthy. And if Project ATA has the I.O.A. this freaked out..."
"We should learn more about this project."
"It's top-secret," Rodney said. "Classified by the I.O.A. itself, very need-to-know, and if we needed to know, we would. Right now, our orders are to find Sheppard. " Find him, and then...
"To rightly find something," Teyla said, tranquil as a frozen pond, "we must truly understand why we are seeking it."
"Very Zen," Rodney said. "Don't know if General Landry would agree, but..." Whatever Project ATA was, the I.O.A. had a vested interest in it. Hacking federal databases was one thing, but the I.O.A. tended to get testy when its own authority was breached; the uneasy alliances between its member states made for a very touchy agency.
Rodney had screwed up before, making the wrong choice, and had paid for it with his entire scientific career. The level of security classification he had now had taken a decade to earn back. If he broke their confidence now, they wouldn't just strip him of his clearances; they'd throw him in prison. Hell, if preserving Project ATA's secrecy was worth enough to them, they could do worse than that; some of the nations on the I.O.A. board still had the death penalty for treason on their books.
Teyla watched him, not fidgeting, perfectly patient. She knew the stakes as well as he did; she was waiting for him to decide. No censure, no pressure.
"Okay," Rodney said. "Okay, let's figure out what ATA is, before we decide whether we're going to kill for it."
Teyla's dark eyes were intent. "Are you sure?"
Rodney smiled, trying for bravado, suspecting it came off more sickly. "What the hell, it's just a job. It's not like I'm married to the spy game."
"Rodney." Teyla's smile took him by surprise—beautiful as always and not any larger than the usual Mona Lisa curve of her lips, but brighter somehow. "Of the people in the S.G.C.—you, I trust."
"Yeah." Rodney felt his cheeks go hot, ducked his head and swiveled his chair back toward his computer monitors, before he made a complete idiot of himself. "Me, too."
Rodney was a genius, and had the degrees and the indictments to prove it, but even the best hacker can't find data that doesn't exist. Around three AM, Teyla convinced him that sleep deprivation wasn't conducive to computer espionage—either that or she was having trouble sleeping herself over the clacking of his keyboard. So he staggered to bed, only to rouse before seven, brain buzzing with alternative infiltration strategies as he poured himself coffee from the pot in the room. If the NSA still had that backdoor after their latest upgrade...
His plans were interrupted when he switched on his main monitor and was confronted by a blinking message box. He brought up the window, read it and blinked. "Son of a bitch..."
"What is it?"
Teyla had been sound asleep, but now she was entirely awake, sitting up in her bed with her eyes open and not bleary. Her conservative cotton pajamas weren't so much as wrinkled; even her hair was barely mussed. Rodney, who would need at least two more cups of coffee before he could focus his eyes without blinking, drew his bathrobe closer and pawed at his head to flatten his fluffy, thinning hair.
"Does it concern ATA?" Teyla asked, pouring herself a cup of hot water and selecting a tea bag before joining him by the computer.
"No," Rodney said, gulping the last of his coffee. "But the DNA trace found our new friend from yesterday." He gestured with the empty cup to the screen, displaying an ID photo of a young man. Though his hair in the old ID was longer, and he had no beard, the eyes were the same. And blood didn't lie; this man's was a match to the genetic material left on Teyla's ninja sticks.
"Ronon Dex," Teyla read off the screen. "So who is he?"
"Who was he, you mean," Rodney corrected. "I was running the DNA through military databases—his height narrowed the search significantly, I would've found him sooner, except that my original parameters only included the living. According to Dex's death certificate here, he passed on seven years ago."
Teyla raised an eyebrow. "He seemed to be quite animate yesterday."
"Yeah, you noticed?"
Teyla studied Dex's image. "You said military databases. So he was killed in action?"
"Yes and no. He was discharged from the US Army nine years ago, became a mercenary for hire, working for a small private military contractor, Sateda Security."
"I am not familiar with that PMC."
"Probably because they don't exist anymore," Rodney said, bringing up another window. "I just looked up Sateda—they went bankrupt seven years back, right when Dex supposedly died—he wasn't the only one. An action in eastern Europe went bad..." He scanned the text, whistled low. "Or went to hell, more like. It seems like Sateda went under because they lost most of their personnel in one fell swoop."
"What was the operation?" Teyla asked, reading over his shoulder.
"Classified," Rodney said, but that was no problem; S.G.C. agent clearance couldn't get him the goods on ATA, but when he plugged in his password on the investigation file, it logged him straight through. He skimmed the report. "They were hired as security for a conference that—damn." Rodney sat back in his seat.
"What?" Teyla asked; she didn't read nearly as fast as he could.
"No one knows what really happened," Rodney said grimly, "because no one—supposedly, anyway—got out alive. But the S.G.C. investigated—Sateda was an international company, employed ex-military from a dozen different countries, so we claimed jurisdiction—and according to this, that 'conference' was arranged by folks with some seriously unpleasant connections."
"G.O.A.U.L.D.?" Teyla guessed.
"No." Rodney hesitated, but she could just read it for herself anyway. "The Wraith sect."
Teyla went frighteningly still, utterly and completely, like time itself had stopped around her. She didn't say anything, but Rodney heard her intake of breath, a faint sharp hiss over the humming computer equipment.
Not knowing what else to do, Rodney fidgeted with his wireless trackball, spinning the ball in its socket and twirling the pointer around the screen, as he babbled, "That's the suspicion, anyway, looks like there's no actual proof, because no one turned up afterwards to confirm or deny—"
"No," Teyla said. "There would not be anyone." She didn't look at Rodney, eyes on the screen, on Dex's ID photo. "But if it were the Wraith, then Ronon Dex should not be here now."
"He must have gotten away," Rodney said.
"Not if they were Wraith," Teyla said softly.
"Well, you saw him—the guy is good. And I know the stories about what the Wraith can do, but they're only human, right, whatever crazy rituals they're into—" Rites that made Aztec blood sacrifices look like a country fair square-dance, from what he'd heard, but those were only rumors...
"They were Wraith," Teyla repeated.
Rodney really wished she wouldn't say it like that; it always made his skin crawl. Like they were actual ghosts, rather than a grotesque renegade cult. And yeah, he didn't want to think about the kind of experience Teyla had had with them, that made her say the name like that—he'd never asked his partner about those sealed parts of her personnel file, always assumed it wasn't something she wanted to talk about, anymore than he wanted to hear it. But it was still damn creepy. "Then maybe Dex joined the cult? Drank the Kool-Aid, signed on board."
Teyla froze for another moment, then shook her head, so forcefully that her auburn hair whipped about her cheeks. "No. He is not one of them."
"Are you sure?" Rodney asked. "He does have a stun-gun, and the Wraith are supposed to have developed their own model."
"He is not Wraith," Teyla said. "I have fought him; I would know if he were."
"Then maybe he's working for them," Rodney suggested. "If he was a mercenary for hire, maybe they've hired him."
"To come here—to find John Sheppard." Teyla's eyes widened. "Rodney, if Sheppard, or Project ATA, somehow involves the Wraith—"
"It would explain why the I.O.A. is freaking out," Rodney said.
"If Sheppard is making a deal with the Wraith," Teyla said, her voice gone soft and bitterly cold, "then I will not hesitate."
Her eyes were absolute zero, as if any warmth he ever might have seen in them had only been imagined. Rodney couldn't meet them, looked back to his computer instead. "Okay, so let's ask him if that's what's going on."
Teyla blinked, her brow knitting. "Ask who?"
"Ronon Dex." Rodney waved at the screen. "The S.G.C.'s dossier has a couple pseudonyms he used to go by, and one's in use now, registered at a hotel two blocks from here."
Teyla blinked again. "That is very fast work, Rodney."
"Yes, it is," Rodney agreed. "Um, provided this Jason Ioane isn't actually the Hawaiian surfer he's supposed to be..."
"Let us find out," Teyla said, calmly, but she wasn't smiling.
Jason Ioane's hotel was a couple stars below the Atlantis, which meant lower security; they walked through the lobby in the camouflage of a crowd of German tourists, and no one even noticed them taking the elevator.
Thinking there was a good chance Dex was out Sheppard-hunting, Rodney had brought a panoply of bugs, audio and visual observation devices, both wireless and self-contained. But when they reached Room 605, before he could check the lock, Teyla raised her hand. "He is inside," she mouthed.
Rodney nodded, bowing to her uncanny instincts—not that he believed in psychic powers, but Teyla's skills would give any skeptic a run for their money. They walked past the room without a change in stride, and Rodney kept walking, letting his footsteps fall heavy and loud, while Teyla circled back, light-footed as a cat.
The cleaning staff was occupied on a lower floor, and there was a tray left in the hall a few doors down. Teyla picked it up without rattling the dishes, placed the lid back over the empty plate and then brought it to 605. She rapped on the door and pitched her voice to an unrecognizable alto. "Room service, sir."
Rodney was too far down the hall to hear if there were any answer, but in a moment the door lock rattled. Teyla kept her head down, bending over the tray, hiding her face.
It didn't help. The door swung in suddenly, and Dex came out like a lion charging into the Colosseum, aiming for a meal of hapless Christians. Teyla's gun was still in its concealed holster, but it probably wouldn't have helped her anyway; Dex was fast enough, and crazy enough, that a bullet would probably just get him angry.
Teyla was faster, though. She dropped the tray with a crash, slipped out of his check like water and went for a throw that Rodney had seen take down sumo wrestlers. But Dex avoided it by a hair, then twisted to lock a huge arm around Teyla's neck, and hauled her up, her feet almost off the ground.
"Surprise, meeting you here," he growled in her ear.
"Yeah, isn't it?" Rodney said, and fired Dex's own blaster at his broad back. The stun beam flashed red around him, and then he went down. Rodney resisted the urge to yell, "Timber!"
Teyla only just got out of the way of that toppling tree in time. She gazed down at Dex, rubbing her neck thoughtfully.
"That was stun, right?" Rodney asked nervously as he approached.
"His breathing is fine," Teyla confirmed.
"Good." Rodney shoved the blaster under his jacket and leaned over Dex's fallen body. "That's what you get for trying to strangle my partner...again."
The old 'excuse my buddy, he's had too much to drink' ploy was a bit awkward with a 'buddy' as big as Dex, but with some artful misdirection Rodney and Teyla managed to maneuver his unconscious bulk out of the hotel and into their rental car with no one the wiser. At the rattrap motel on the strip, nobody cared what state he was in, whatever time of the morning it was; the desk attendant handed Rodney a key without looking up from the porn playing on his video iPod.
They took extra care securing their captive to the wooden chair—returning the favor, Rodney thought with a guilty but undeniable hint of satisfaction, as he pulled the reinforced plastic ties tight. Still, when Dex groaned, he startled and scrambled back instinctively before he caught himself, straightened up and adjusted his tie and pretended he was facing a roomful of clueless grad students and not a trained killer.
Dex's big body tensed against the bonds, but none of them gave. Then he jerked up his head, turned it back and forth, his hazel eyes roaming over the dingy motel room, before sliding over Rodney to stop on Teyla. He opened his mouth. "How long?" he asked in a hoarse croak.
Remembering how dry his own mouth had been after being stunned, Rodney sympathized. Though not enough to offer him water. The guy would probably grab the glass in his teeth and smash Rodney over the head with it. Rodney breathed deep and tried not to fidget. Teyla remained impassive, arms crossed, staring at Dex from several feet away. Even sitting, he barely had to look up to meet her eyes.
Dex licked his lips. "How long have I been out?" he asked again. When Teyla didn't answer, Dex wrenched at the ties around his wrists, his biceps bulging in ways that Schwarzenegger would envy. "Damn it, how long?!"
He was half-shouting, but he didn't sound enraged so much as panicked. Maybe not actually scared, but anxious. Closing on desperate, even, and Rodney didn't want to think about what the hell would drive a guy like this to desperation.
Besides, interrogation was all very well, but until they started asking questions there wasn't much point to torture. "It's been about an hour since I stunned you," Rodney said, checking his watch. "A little less."
Dex stopped struggling, relaxing so suddenly the chair creaked as his weight settled on it again. "Okay," he said. Then he turned his head to angle a look at Rodney. "You stunned me?"
Rodney bristled. "What, you think I don't know how to use a gun? I am a secret agent, you know. And figuring out your blaster's grand total of two settings wasn't exactly rocket science—though I can do that, too, when required—"
Dex looked from Rodney back to Teyla, dropped his bass another half-octave and growled, "You got to let me go."
"Yeah, sure, we'll get right on that, since you asked so nicely," Rodney said. "You weren't too eager to let me go, when the shoe was on the other foot. Or the ties on the other wrists, whichever."
Dex glanced back to him, but only for a second, a flicker of his eyes, and then he appealed to Teyla again. "You don't know what you're dealing with. Let me go."
Teyla's voice cracked like a whip. "Do you work for them?"
To Rodney's surprise, Dex didn't ask for clarification. Instead he pulled back his head, arching his neck like a starting horse, and stared at Teyla from under his brows. "You know them?"
"Too well." If Teyla's tone was cold, that was nothing compared to the darkness in her eyes. The vacuum between the galaxies would be warmer. No good cop for this interrogation.
"I'm no Wraith worshiper," Dex said, and the disgust in his voice was almost a match for hers.
"But are you doing their will?" Teyla demanded.
Dex's hesitation was brief, but just long enough that Rodney winced. "No," the big man said, but a hint of that desperation crept into his tone again. "I'm not."
The edge in Teyla's voice was sharp enough to score a diamond. "You lie."
Any ordinary, sane person would have been begging for mercy, now, before Teyla laid a hand on them. But Dex squared his broad shoulders, drew himself up against the bonds. "No," he denied. "I'm not theirs. He's not one of them."
"'He'? Who's he?" Rodney asked.
Dex's gaze flicked to him again. "You wouldn't know. Wouldn't get it."
"Try us," Rodney challenged. "We get a lot more than you'd think. We have to, to make it in this business. And we're pretty damn good at what we do."
"Yeah?"
"We caught you, didn't we? And you haven't gotten away yet. So who's the worse spy, hmm?"
Dex snorted. "Not a spy."
"Who do you work for?" Teyla rapped out. When their missions called for it, Rodney had seen her charm the pants off half a dozen hardened criminals—a couple times literally, disturbingly enough—but her icy anger now was truer than any beguiling wiles she might employ.
And Dex, Rodney realized, respected her for it. As much as Teyla had respected him, before this Wraith business came up. He met her eyes boldly, said, "He goes by Michael."
"Michael?" Rodney repeated, frowning, and then he got a good look at his partner's face, the blood draining out under her warmly brown complexion, her lips leached of color. Rodney paled, too. "No, it can't be—not—he doesn't mean—"
"How do you know that name?" Teyla said, and her lips might be gray but her tone was solid steel.
"You know we're S.G.C.," Rodney said, "you're just name-dropping..." but that didn't make sense; the Michael affair was so classified even most of their fellow agents hadn't heard of it. Dex couldn't have known. Unless whoever he was working for was so well-informed that they'd broken the S.G.C.'s most advanced security...
Or else they'd been personally involved. But Michael was supposed to be dead and gone, and this—
Dex looked between them. "You know Michael?"
"What do you do for him?" Teyla asked, so softly Rodney couldn't tell if she were angry, or homicidal, or terrified.
Dex shrugged. "This, that. What he tells me to."
"How," Teyla breathed, "how can you..."
"He's not one of them," Dex said.
"No," Teyla said. "He is worse."
"Yeah, well." Dex's voice was quiet, too, a rumble like a quake's aftershocks. "Don't got much choice."
Teyla's voice made Rodney shudder, it was so preternaturally even. "Why?"
Dex studied her for a moment, then rocked his head forward. "My back," he said. "Base of the neck."
"What—" Rodney started to ask, but Teyla only touched Rodney's shoulder, requested, "Watch him."
Rodney didn't question his partner; he pulled out the blaster and aimed it at Dex. "Okay, I have him covered."
Teyla nodded in recognition, and walked up to Dex in the chair. She undid the top buttons of his white shirt, then circled around to his back, took his collar and pulled the shirt down to reveal the back of his neck, running her fingers down the ridge of his spine. Dex stayed still, not twitching at the touch of her fingers, though they were probably chilly; Teyla's usually were.
"Rodney," Teyla said, quiet and definite.
"What? What is it?" Rodney approached with some trepidation, not lowering the blaster. Dex watched him sidle over, and his set lips might have twisted in a slight smirk, but he didn't try anything, not moving a single impressive muscle.
Teyla took Rodney's free hand—her fingers were cool and dry, as always—lifted it to Dex's neck and placed Rodney's fingers to the skin. He almost resisted, not having any particular interest in stroking a man, no matter how remarkably sculpted his body was, but then he realized Teyla's point. Dex didn't move as he ran his fingers over it—right below the base of the neck, just to the left of the spinal column, was a small mass as solid as the ridges of backbone, swelling just under the skin.
"How long?" Teyla asked, her voice betraying nothing, no hint to Rodney as to the meaning of this.
"Seven years," Dex said.
"You ran for seven years?" and that was surprise, shock, even, which Teyla didn't try to hide.
"Michael found me six months ago. Turned it off. I don't do what he says, he turns it on again." Dex twisted his head around, trying to meet Teyla's eyes over his shoulder. "I don't report back to him in an hour and a half, he turns it on."
"I see," Teyla said, sounding shaken.
"I don't," Rodney said. "What the hell are you talking about, what is that—"
"You have to let me go," Dex said. "Or else leave me, but get out of here. Get far away. It gets turned on, then anyone they see me with—"
"Yes," Teyla said. "I understand."
"Understand what—" Rodney demanded.
Teyla laid a hand on his arm. "We must talk," she said, and throwing a final glance over her shoulder at Dex, still secured to the chair, she walked them out of the motel room.
Just past noon, the sun was high overhead, baking the Vegas pavement. It was over a hundred degrees outside, and after the motel's overworked air conditioning, the heat hit like a hammer. Rodney, sweating like a stuck pig the moment the door opened, tugged his tie a couple fingers loose and thought longingly of their last mission to Antarctica.
"We have to help him," Teyla said.
"We have to what, now?"
"Help him," his partner repeated, as they walked around the end of the motel block and into the scant shade cast by the side of the stucco building. "Ronon Dex."
"You mean, the guy who tried to strangle you, twice. Who knocked me out and tied me up. Who wants to do god-knows-what to Sheppard—which we still need to ask him about, seeing as it's why we went through the trouble of capturing him to begin with—"
"He is not our enemy," Teyla said.
"No, he just works for him." Rodney wiped at his forehead, disgusted by the dampness of sweat. Dry heat, his sweet sweltering ass. "If Dex's Michael is really our Michael—"
"He is." Teyla sounded as certain as the sun gleaming in the cloudless sky. "But Ronon does not serve willingly."
"What is that thing in his back?"
"A tracking device," Teyla said. She touched her upper arm, where their subcutaneous S.G.C. transmitters were placed. "Like our own, but more powerful. There is nowhere on Earth that the signal cannot be traced, no way to block it. The Wraith implant them in their prey, occasionally. It is a sport. But for a runner to evade them for seven years..."
"So Dex is good?"
"Very good." Teyla stood only halfway in the shade, but her eyes were dark even in the bright daylight. "Rodney, his enemy is our enemy, and it is in our power to help him. In good conscience, we cannot do anything else."
Rodney was tempted to remind her that one of the alternate appellations suggested for the S.G.C. was "Screw Good Conscience," but by Teyla's expression, she wasn't in the mood to appreciate the irony. Besides, there was something...rattling, about Dex's desperation. Fear was an old friend of Rodney's, and he'd long since decided that better a live coward than a dead hero; but Dex was something different, a wholly other sort of man. That Dex had told them to run, warned them about the Wraith... Rodney had barely talked to the guy—the guy barely talked anyway—but there was something to Dex's bearing, the way he spoke, that made Rodney think things like "courage" and "honor" weren't just words to him.
After ten years on this job, Rodney had come to realize that there weren't enough people like that in the world. And his partner could use the company. "All right, then—"
His instincts registered the movement out of the corner of his eye; he had pulled his sidearm before his conscious mind caught up. "Freeze!"
Teyla had her gun out as well, matching him move for move, aiming at the figure climbing out of the window on the back side of the motel complex. "Do not move," she emphasized.
Ronon Dex looked at their combined firepower and raised his hands. His shadow was short in the high sun, a stubby dark puddle on the sandy ground, and his expression would have been sheepish on a lesser man.
Keeping her gun level, Teyla walked toward him, stopping less than ten feet away. Then, deliberately, she holstered her sidearm, held up her open hands, placatingly. "If you wish to run," she said, "we will let you run."
Dex cocked his head. "But?" he challenged.
"We will not let you touch Sheppard, or what he carries. So if you run now, you will have to keep running. From the Wraith, and likely Michael as well."
Teyla's calm voice didn't make her statement a threat, but a basic fact. Dex didn't move, and he was too far away for Rodney to tell if his expression changed.
Teyla took a step closer—any nearer, and she'd be close enough for Dex to grab her. Rodney ignored the sting of sweat dripping in his eyes, kept his Beretta pointed square at Dex's broad chest. He should've pulled the blaster, he realized belatedly, but too late to swap now. If Dex made a move, he would have to take his chances with a genuine bullet.
"Or," Teyla said, calmly unafraid, "you can come with us, and we can eliminate the hold Michael has on you. The tracking implant can be removed."
Dex jerked back like he had been punched, then steadied himself. "Tried to cut it out," he said flatly. "Couldn't. Doctors couldn't do it, either."
"And was this doctor a world-class surgeon?" Rodney asked. "No? Then trust that we've got better people than an underworld quack."
"Our organization has dealt with similar technology," Teyla said. "Our doctor may be able to take it out."
"May," Dex repeated.
"I will not make you a promise that is not guaranteed," Teyla told him. "Only the Wraith can be that certain."
Dex looked from her, over to Rodney. "So what do you want?"
Rodney doubted Teyla's altruism would be as convincing as his own honesty, so he answered before she did. "We want to know what Michael wants with Sheppard and that briefcase. If we get that implant out of you, you'll tell us whatever you know."
"So," Teyla said, and took another step, putting herself within Dex's long reach. He could grab her gun before Rodney would have time to react, Rodney was almost sure, and Teyla knew it as well as he did. Her trust now was in Dex's honor, not Rodney's limited action skills. "Do we have an agreement?"