Self-indulgent Rodney torture story, "Progeny" tag
As the (not-)title says: I started this just to play around with some hurt!fic, based on this exchange in "Progeny":
Sheppard: What'd they do to you?
McKay: Ah-torture. In ways too hideous and, um-intimate?-to recount.
I took it literally, because I wanted to. Rodney was going to be taken from the Asuran cell and tortured-first by experiencing both highly localized and full-body pain via a futuristic sensory net-device, then by being invaded with nanites that he swears he can feel crawling through him, and finally with some sort of sexual assault, hence the "intimate" comment. All while they interrogated him about Atlantis and Earth. The nanites would work against his will to get him aroused. It was fun when I first thought of it, but I think it was too much for one story. There should be (should have been-grr, what tense is appropriate for this?) just one torture method instead of three, and Rodney probably wouldn't last long enough for all three methods anyway, between his lack of training for this kind of situation and his torturers being Replicators who can read his mind. That's probably why it faltered. Or the initial impetus just faded. And then I read a story by friendshipper with a far more plausible interpretation of what happened. A friend helpfully pointed out that the loss of momentum may have had to do with the lack of a point of Rodney being tortured. She was right, but apparently that didn't help me pick this up again.
You'll see where it breaks down towards the end into sketchy notes and gaps where other stuff was going to happen.
Rating: R/NC-17
Summary: What happened to Rodney in his hallucination?
Spoilers: "Progeny."
One minute, Rodney was watching Ronon taste-test morsels of delicious-smelling food from the cart and listening to Niam try to placate the team; the next, he was stumbling back because Ronon had taken a swing at Niam while Teyla and Sheppard lashed out at the three other Asurans in one of those swift, coordinated attacks whose warning signs (often as subtle as a glance from Sheppard) Rodney still didn't always manage to catch, even after two years in the field. Teyla flipped a guard flat on his back while John elbowed, kicked and punched at the remaining pair. Ronon had Niam on the ground with a boot planted on the guy's throat. Pressed up wide-eyed against the wall, Rodney reached out a sweaty hand to take Elizabeth's cool one, ready to run for it at Sheppard's command.
For a minute, it actually seemed like they'd be able to fight their way free. Then the guy Teyla had flipped managed to sweep her feet out from under her, and the stockier of the other two guards landed a punch that sent Sheppard sprawling into the far wall. Ronon glanced back and forth between them and Niam as if weighing the advantage of letting Niam up in favor of helping the others. Rodney panted, his heart pounding, and his hand twitched with the thought of leaping into the fray instead of letting his friends fight for his freedom. Elizabeth squeezed back; he turned to look at her, and she shook her head, lips pressed tightly together.
Sheppard was on his feet again, ducking and dealing blows but clearly hurting. Teyla wrestled the other guy on the floor; he had at least a hundred pounds on her, but she was giving as good as she got. Then-of course, because it was just that kind of mission-there came the unmistakable sound of booted feet in the hall, and reinforcements swarmed into the room; enough that, in less than a minute, they'd tackled Ronon to the ground (it took six Asurans to finally pin him), wrangled a furious Teyla into a headlock, and forced Sheppard face-first into the slatted wall with his arms wrenched behind his back and his legs kicked apart.
Rodney wondered if he should take offense that he and Elizabeth only warranted one guard each, until he found himself unceremoniously shoved to his knees. "Ow!" he couldn't help protesting, catching himself on his hands and grimacing at the pain that shot up his legs and back. "Do you know what kind of damage an uncushioned impact on a hard surface can have on your joints?"
"Rodney," Elizabeth warned, sounding weirdly normal despite also being on her knees in the middle of an inescapable prison at the mercy of a bunch of mentally unstable Ancients (as if there were any other kind).
Niam had gotten to his feet, rubbing his throat. Her hands laced behind her head in true hostage style, Elizabeth addressed him and the other Asurans in her best Diplomat Voice: "We mean you no harm. By detaining us without warning or reason, you left us no choice but to try to free ourselves. Let my people go"-Rodney's brain flashed to Elizabeth in a toga making demands of the Pharaoh, and he hoped there wouldn't have to be a plague and a rain of frogs before they'd listen-"and I promise they will not try to hurt you. Let me speak to Oberoth again. I'm sure we can-"
Rodney never got to hear what Elizabeth was sure about, because at that moment Ronon managed to buck off a couple of the men holding him and free an arm, which he promptly used to bash the closest guard's head against the ground. Before he could get any further, a burst of red energy struck him in the chest, and he fell back with a groan.
"Ronon!" Teyla and Sheppard shouted. A second shot quickly followed, and Ronon lay still. Rodney saw one of the guards tuck Ronon's own confiscated weapon back into a holster at his hip. The Asurans who'd been holding Ronon let go and stood up without even looking at him.
"Oh, my God," Elizabeth said quietly.
"Is he dead? Was that thing still on stun? You made him set it on stun before, right?" Rodney babbled.
"Shut up, McKay," Sheppard gritted out, and got a shove for his troubles.
"I'm finding it strangely hard to shut up when our hulking bodyguard has been taken out and we're all being held hostage by-" Something that felt terrifyingly like a gun barrel pressed hard and cold against the back of Rodney's head. He shut up.
Niam stepped in front of him, looking remarkably composed and, hey, unbruised, for someone who'd recently been ground into the floor under Ronon's boot. "Dr. McKay likes to talk," he said. "We will begin with him."
"The hell you will," Sheppard growled.
Rodney's mouth went dry. "Begin what? The ceremonial massage and dinner, right? Because I'm sure you don't mean torture. I really, really hate torture, and I happen to be very bad at it, which come to think of it isn't the best thing to say to the people who're about to-" The guard shoved his head forward with the gun barrel, once, then hauled him up by one arm. Rodney couldn't help another aggrieved "ow!" at the bruising pressure as he stumbled to his feet.
"McKay!" Sheppard said, starting to struggle again, until one of his own guards pressed Sheppard's hand into the forcefield between the slats and held it there with an awful crackle-buzz and Sheppard screamed through clenched teeth.
"Sheppard!" Rodney shouted, even as Elizabeth and Teyla cried, "John!" Manhandled toward the cell door, Rodney could only watch Sheppard judder and then sag into the guards' hold with a groan when they finally let his arm go. Then the guards' grip forced Rodney to turn around so he couldn't see what they were doing to his friends anymore, only heard Sheppard's panting breaths, then Elizabeth's entreaties to Niam, and finally, as they turned the corner, nothing but his entourage's boots on the floor and the hum of the ersatz Atlantis around them.
* * *
The room they brought him to was brightly lit in yellows and reds and looked like a weird hybrid of the science labs and Carson's infirmary, if the infirmary had a row of exam beds from hell. Oh, crap. Oh, crap, he was so going to be on one of those beds having horrible things done to him, like, like being injected with experimental concoctions or the Asuran version of truth serum or having his fingernails or teeth yanked out. Or maybe they'd just hit or burn or cut him-oh, oh please let there not be any knives-
They dumped him on his hands and knees, providing a welcome distraction from his imminent agony. "Hey, careful with the helpless prisoner," he said, wiping his palms on his thighs. "I happen to have one of the most-if not the most-valuable brains in the galaxy. In two galaxies, even."
"Then I am sure you understand the value of cooperating with us," came a calm, deep voice from above. Rodney looked up into the condescending face of a forty-something man with a high forehead, sharp cheekbones, thin lips and piercing blue eyes, framed by short, curly blond hair. The man wore a uniform in the same cream-and-brown motif as the rest of the Asurans.
"And you are?" Rodney asked; disdain was familiar, reassuring, two things he very much appreciated when his heart was trying to burst out through his throat.
"I am Basano, First Inquisitor of the Asuran High Council," the man said. "I am the one who will extract answers from you."
"Extract," Rodney repeated, and swallowed hard. "Right. Look, ah, can we skip the torture and get to the point where you decide I'm useless and send me back to our nice comfy prison cell?"
The Asuran-what was it, Ba'al, Basalt, Bozo, crap. How had he forgotten already? Oh, yes, impending torture-cocked his head like a bird. "You would choose one of the others to take your place?"
"No!" he said immediately. He imagined Sheppard in one of those contraptions, Teyla, proud and stoic and resistant while the Asurans did unspeakably painful things to them. "No, no, no, no, no. Look, none of us are going to give you anything. You may as well give up now and let us go ho-"
A guard kicked him hard in the shoulder and he fell back onto the floor, sputtering. Hands tugged at his jacket and shoelaces. When he began to struggle, one of them grabbed his hair and banged the back of his skull against the floor. Pain lanced through his head and down his neck and back, leaving him dizzy and nauseous as involuntary tears blurred his vision. Blood filled his mouth; he'd bitten his tongue. Dazed, he distantly felt them turn him over and work him out of his clothes like one of the floppy dolls Jeannie played with when she was a kid.
By the time he'd blinked his way back to something resembling lucidity, they'd hauled him up and onto one of the beds. He didn't know what to panic about first: that he was naked, that he was about to be tortured, that he had a throbbing lump on the back of his head that was probably bleeding and getting infected right this very second with whatever alien microbes lay in wait on the firm padding beneath him, that he was about to be tortured, that he could choke on the blood still trickling into the back of his throat and die before they even started if they put him in a bad position, or that he couldn't prioritize the burgeoning list because his head hurt so much, and what if they'd caused permanent damage? Didn't these people realize that Atlantis-hell, the whole galaxy depended on his brain functioning at maximum capacity?
He wanted to wipe off his bloody lips and chin, at least, and then he really wanted to cover himself, not that they hadn't all had a nice few minutes in which to see everything, but for some reason he had trouble raising his hand. It took him a few seconds-sluggish thinking, definitely a sign of concussion and possibly brain damage-to figure out that that was because the Asurans were tying him down: coolly efficient, they'd already secured his wrists and biceps at his sides with loops of something leathery, and they were doing the same to his ankles and thighs down at the foot of the bed. He pulled against the tethers; they held strong. A dim memory surfaced of being restrained in the Atlantis infirmary as he yelled, writhed and sweated his way through enzyme withdrawal. Perspiration broke out across his forehead and under his arms.
"These restraints were designed to hold Wraith," the Asuran informed him as thick straps were drawn across his chest, his hips, his knees. "Fighting them is futile."
"'r you going to assimilate me?" Rodney slurred. He tried to laugh, but it came out more hysterical than brave, and then he lost all credit when the Asurans pulled the straps tight and forced the breath out of him.
"Not yet," the Asuran replied.
Before Rodney could decide whether he needed to start freaking out or if the man simply had great deadpan delivery for someone who couldn't have any idea that his captive had just made a Borg joke (and a lame one at that), his head was forced back against the chair-ow, ow, ow, hello, nearly mortal head wound-and a strap across his forehead held him in place.
The Asurans stepped back, and Rodney's gaze darted wildly back and forth across his limited field of vision. He couldn't see what they were doing-or what Ba-whoever was doing that made the rest of them retreat. He couldn't lift his head or close his legs. He couldn't pull his arms in far enough to touch his sides.
But he could talk. Of course, talk.
And scream.
"Oh, God," he whispered, staring in blank terror at the space above him. This was really happening: he was strapped to a bed on an alien planet, naked and powerless, with the heroes trapped in another room, and he was going to be-tortured. Tortured in ways unknown that might leave him sliced into ribbons or missing fingers or liquefied from the inside out. Tortured so far beyond Kolya's goon cutting his arm that he was going to laugh at the Genii when this was all over. If. If the Asurans didn't kill him.
"Apply the sensory tabs," Basano-huh, right, Basano-said.
Rodney flinched as several sets of hands touched him all at once, but no pain came. After a few seconds, he registered that the Asurans were pressing small, sticky pads to his body-dozens of them, everywhere, from the soles of his feet to his forehead and scalp, clustered around his joints, on the insides of his elbows and the backs of his knees, his armpits, his chest and belly and back, his inner thighs, between his legs. He whimpered; those last few promised nothing good. Maybe they were recording devices, like a full-body polygraph machine? He could hope.
The Asurans stepped out of sight again, and Rodney tried to free himself just once more. Call it a fit of the sort of optimism in the face of impossible odds that had kept him alive and relatively whole during the past two years in Pegasus.
The bonds held. Of course. He sagged.
Basano stepped up beside him. "We will start simply. What is your name?"
Oh, thank God-he could tell them that. "McKay," he said promptly. No sense holding out on something they already knew. That it kept them from hurting him for the moment was a mere side benefit. "Rodney McKay. Well, Meredith Rodney McKay, technically, but please don't call me that, except now you will because I asked you not to, not that you could possibly appreciate the irony. As if this couldn't get any more humiliati-ow!"
There'd been some kind of brief but intense pain on the bottom of his right foot, gone before he could identify it. Maybe a sting? "Did something just bite me? Was that an insect?" He tried to raise his head to see, but only succeeded in making his neck hurt and his head pound harder. "I happen to be fatally allergic to bee stings, and if whatever just attacked me is in any way related to them, you're going to kill me a lot faster than you-ow!" Another quick twinge, sharp-or was it hot?-this time on the arch of his left foot. "Are those needles? Is this some kind of twisted acupuncture session? You did sterilize those beforehand, right? Because dying of blood poisoning was not on my li-" This time he broke off with a gasp as .
Basano leaned over him. "You talk, but you do not say anything of interest. That will soon change."
"Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, oh God, oh God stop."
Pain. Pain, everywhere, agonizing, excruciating, indescribable, unending. It was burns and frostbite and needles and pinches and punches and pepper spray and cat claws and anaphylactic shock and muscle cramps and broken bones and chicken pox and Ebola and electrocution and an acid bath, it was Kolya's knife and falling off his bike when he was six and the arrow in his ass on that planet with the Wraith-sellouts and Jeannie yanking his hair and his dentist drilling out cavities and the Siberian wind, it was-it was-
It was over.
Reality came back to him in pieces. His throat hurt. It was wet between his legs.
sounded like Brent Spiner
never going to be able to watch Star Trek again
"I am sorry it had to be this way, Dr. McKay."
"Proceed to the next phase."
"We do not experience sexual arousal. The Ancients did not think it necessary."
And oh Jesus, oh Jesus, they were crawling all over him, in him, through him, and he knew it wasn't scientifically possible but he could feel them, like being covered with tiny insects except on the inside.
or, or, oh God, brain-dead-living in an Ancient city for ten thousand years, maybe even rogue Ancients themselves, the Asurans could have the technology to glean any information they wanted straight from his brain, leave him a vegetable
* * *
In the movies, people always passed out when an injury or, say, torture by sadistic villains, got to be too much. At some point, the hero (or the damsel in distress, but Rodney was just not going to go there) succumbed to the pain and was granted a reprieve, however brief, in blissful oblivion.
Hollywood had let him down.
Throughout this whole ordeal-while the Asurans ___ and ___ and ___ him-he had remained awake. Aware. Conscious. Present.
English/Ancient Greek Dictionary: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/Woodhouse/
interrogate = επερωτώ, ανακρίνω
torture = τυραννώ, βάσανο, βασανιστήριο, βασανίζω
torturer = βασανιστής, δήμιος
Sheppard: What'd they do to you?
McKay: Ah-torture. In ways too hideous and, um-intimate?-to recount.
I took it literally, because I wanted to. Rodney was going to be taken from the Asuran cell and tortured-first by experiencing both highly localized and full-body pain via a futuristic sensory net-device, then by being invaded with nanites that he swears he can feel crawling through him, and finally with some sort of sexual assault, hence the "intimate" comment. All while they interrogated him about Atlantis and Earth. The nanites would work against his will to get him aroused. It was fun when I first thought of it, but I think it was too much for one story. There should be (should have been-grr, what tense is appropriate for this?) just one torture method instead of three, and Rodney probably wouldn't last long enough for all three methods anyway, between his lack of training for this kind of situation and his torturers being Replicators who can read his mind. That's probably why it faltered. Or the initial impetus just faded. And then I read a story by friendshipper with a far more plausible interpretation of what happened. A friend helpfully pointed out that the loss of momentum may have had to do with the lack of a point of Rodney being tortured. She was right, but apparently that didn't help me pick this up again.
You'll see where it breaks down towards the end into sketchy notes and gaps where other stuff was going to happen.
Rating: R/NC-17
Summary: What happened to Rodney in his hallucination?
Spoilers: "Progeny."
One minute, Rodney was watching Ronon taste-test morsels of delicious-smelling food from the cart and listening to Niam try to placate the team; the next, he was stumbling back because Ronon had taken a swing at Niam while Teyla and Sheppard lashed out at the three other Asurans in one of those swift, coordinated attacks whose warning signs (often as subtle as a glance from Sheppard) Rodney still didn't always manage to catch, even after two years in the field. Teyla flipped a guard flat on his back while John elbowed, kicked and punched at the remaining pair. Ronon had Niam on the ground with a boot planted on the guy's throat. Pressed up wide-eyed against the wall, Rodney reached out a sweaty hand to take Elizabeth's cool one, ready to run for it at Sheppard's command.
For a minute, it actually seemed like they'd be able to fight their way free. Then the guy Teyla had flipped managed to sweep her feet out from under her, and the stockier of the other two guards landed a punch that sent Sheppard sprawling into the far wall. Ronon glanced back and forth between them and Niam as if weighing the advantage of letting Niam up in favor of helping the others. Rodney panted, his heart pounding, and his hand twitched with the thought of leaping into the fray instead of letting his friends fight for his freedom. Elizabeth squeezed back; he turned to look at her, and she shook her head, lips pressed tightly together.
Sheppard was on his feet again, ducking and dealing blows but clearly hurting. Teyla wrestled the other guy on the floor; he had at least a hundred pounds on her, but she was giving as good as she got. Then-of course, because it was just that kind of mission-there came the unmistakable sound of booted feet in the hall, and reinforcements swarmed into the room; enough that, in less than a minute, they'd tackled Ronon to the ground (it took six Asurans to finally pin him), wrangled a furious Teyla into a headlock, and forced Sheppard face-first into the slatted wall with his arms wrenched behind his back and his legs kicked apart.
Rodney wondered if he should take offense that he and Elizabeth only warranted one guard each, until he found himself unceremoniously shoved to his knees. "Ow!" he couldn't help protesting, catching himself on his hands and grimacing at the pain that shot up his legs and back. "Do you know what kind of damage an uncushioned impact on a hard surface can have on your joints?"
"Rodney," Elizabeth warned, sounding weirdly normal despite also being on her knees in the middle of an inescapable prison at the mercy of a bunch of mentally unstable Ancients (as if there were any other kind).
Niam had gotten to his feet, rubbing his throat. Her hands laced behind her head in true hostage style, Elizabeth addressed him and the other Asurans in her best Diplomat Voice: "We mean you no harm. By detaining us without warning or reason, you left us no choice but to try to free ourselves. Let my people go"-Rodney's brain flashed to Elizabeth in a toga making demands of the Pharaoh, and he hoped there wouldn't have to be a plague and a rain of frogs before they'd listen-"and I promise they will not try to hurt you. Let me speak to Oberoth again. I'm sure we can-"
Rodney never got to hear what Elizabeth was sure about, because at that moment Ronon managed to buck off a couple of the men holding him and free an arm, which he promptly used to bash the closest guard's head against the ground. Before he could get any further, a burst of red energy struck him in the chest, and he fell back with a groan.
"Ronon!" Teyla and Sheppard shouted. A second shot quickly followed, and Ronon lay still. Rodney saw one of the guards tuck Ronon's own confiscated weapon back into a holster at his hip. The Asurans who'd been holding Ronon let go and stood up without even looking at him.
"Oh, my God," Elizabeth said quietly.
"Is he dead? Was that thing still on stun? You made him set it on stun before, right?" Rodney babbled.
"Shut up, McKay," Sheppard gritted out, and got a shove for his troubles.
"I'm finding it strangely hard to shut up when our hulking bodyguard has been taken out and we're all being held hostage by-" Something that felt terrifyingly like a gun barrel pressed hard and cold against the back of Rodney's head. He shut up.
Niam stepped in front of him, looking remarkably composed and, hey, unbruised, for someone who'd recently been ground into the floor under Ronon's boot. "Dr. McKay likes to talk," he said. "We will begin with him."
"The hell you will," Sheppard growled.
Rodney's mouth went dry. "Begin what? The ceremonial massage and dinner, right? Because I'm sure you don't mean torture. I really, really hate torture, and I happen to be very bad at it, which come to think of it isn't the best thing to say to the people who're about to-" The guard shoved his head forward with the gun barrel, once, then hauled him up by one arm. Rodney couldn't help another aggrieved "ow!" at the bruising pressure as he stumbled to his feet.
"McKay!" Sheppard said, starting to struggle again, until one of his own guards pressed Sheppard's hand into the forcefield between the slats and held it there with an awful crackle-buzz and Sheppard screamed through clenched teeth.
"Sheppard!" Rodney shouted, even as Elizabeth and Teyla cried, "John!" Manhandled toward the cell door, Rodney could only watch Sheppard judder and then sag into the guards' hold with a groan when they finally let his arm go. Then the guards' grip forced Rodney to turn around so he couldn't see what they were doing to his friends anymore, only heard Sheppard's panting breaths, then Elizabeth's entreaties to Niam, and finally, as they turned the corner, nothing but his entourage's boots on the floor and the hum of the ersatz Atlantis around them.
* * *
The room they brought him to was brightly lit in yellows and reds and looked like a weird hybrid of the science labs and Carson's infirmary, if the infirmary had a row of exam beds from hell. Oh, crap. Oh, crap, he was so going to be on one of those beds having horrible things done to him, like, like being injected with experimental concoctions or the Asuran version of truth serum or having his fingernails or teeth yanked out. Or maybe they'd just hit or burn or cut him-oh, oh please let there not be any knives-
They dumped him on his hands and knees, providing a welcome distraction from his imminent agony. "Hey, careful with the helpless prisoner," he said, wiping his palms on his thighs. "I happen to have one of the most-if not the most-valuable brains in the galaxy. In two galaxies, even."
"Then I am sure you understand the value of cooperating with us," came a calm, deep voice from above. Rodney looked up into the condescending face of a forty-something man with a high forehead, sharp cheekbones, thin lips and piercing blue eyes, framed by short, curly blond hair. The man wore a uniform in the same cream-and-brown motif as the rest of the Asurans.
"And you are?" Rodney asked; disdain was familiar, reassuring, two things he very much appreciated when his heart was trying to burst out through his throat.
"I am Basano, First Inquisitor of the Asuran High Council," the man said. "I am the one who will extract answers from you."
"Extract," Rodney repeated, and swallowed hard. "Right. Look, ah, can we skip the torture and get to the point where you decide I'm useless and send me back to our nice comfy prison cell?"
The Asuran-what was it, Ba'al, Basalt, Bozo, crap. How had he forgotten already? Oh, yes, impending torture-cocked his head like a bird. "You would choose one of the others to take your place?"
"No!" he said immediately. He imagined Sheppard in one of those contraptions, Teyla, proud and stoic and resistant while the Asurans did unspeakably painful things to them. "No, no, no, no, no. Look, none of us are going to give you anything. You may as well give up now and let us go ho-"
A guard kicked him hard in the shoulder and he fell back onto the floor, sputtering. Hands tugged at his jacket and shoelaces. When he began to struggle, one of them grabbed his hair and banged the back of his skull against the floor. Pain lanced through his head and down his neck and back, leaving him dizzy and nauseous as involuntary tears blurred his vision. Blood filled his mouth; he'd bitten his tongue. Dazed, he distantly felt them turn him over and work him out of his clothes like one of the floppy dolls Jeannie played with when she was a kid.
By the time he'd blinked his way back to something resembling lucidity, they'd hauled him up and onto one of the beds. He didn't know what to panic about first: that he was naked, that he was about to be tortured, that he had a throbbing lump on the back of his head that was probably bleeding and getting infected right this very second with whatever alien microbes lay in wait on the firm padding beneath him, that he was about to be tortured, that he could choke on the blood still trickling into the back of his throat and die before they even started if they put him in a bad position, or that he couldn't prioritize the burgeoning list because his head hurt so much, and what if they'd caused permanent damage? Didn't these people realize that Atlantis-hell, the whole galaxy depended on his brain functioning at maximum capacity?
He wanted to wipe off his bloody lips and chin, at least, and then he really wanted to cover himself, not that they hadn't all had a nice few minutes in which to see everything, but for some reason he had trouble raising his hand. It took him a few seconds-sluggish thinking, definitely a sign of concussion and possibly brain damage-to figure out that that was because the Asurans were tying him down: coolly efficient, they'd already secured his wrists and biceps at his sides with loops of something leathery, and they were doing the same to his ankles and thighs down at the foot of the bed. He pulled against the tethers; they held strong. A dim memory surfaced of being restrained in the Atlantis infirmary as he yelled, writhed and sweated his way through enzyme withdrawal. Perspiration broke out across his forehead and under his arms.
"These restraints were designed to hold Wraith," the Asuran informed him as thick straps were drawn across his chest, his hips, his knees. "Fighting them is futile."
"'r you going to assimilate me?" Rodney slurred. He tried to laugh, but it came out more hysterical than brave, and then he lost all credit when the Asurans pulled the straps tight and forced the breath out of him.
"Not yet," the Asuran replied.
Before Rodney could decide whether he needed to start freaking out or if the man simply had great deadpan delivery for someone who couldn't have any idea that his captive had just made a Borg joke (and a lame one at that), his head was forced back against the chair-ow, ow, ow, hello, nearly mortal head wound-and a strap across his forehead held him in place.
The Asurans stepped back, and Rodney's gaze darted wildly back and forth across his limited field of vision. He couldn't see what they were doing-or what Ba-whoever was doing that made the rest of them retreat. He couldn't lift his head or close his legs. He couldn't pull his arms in far enough to touch his sides.
But he could talk. Of course, talk.
And scream.
"Oh, God," he whispered, staring in blank terror at the space above him. This was really happening: he was strapped to a bed on an alien planet, naked and powerless, with the heroes trapped in another room, and he was going to be-tortured. Tortured in ways unknown that might leave him sliced into ribbons or missing fingers or liquefied from the inside out. Tortured so far beyond Kolya's goon cutting his arm that he was going to laugh at the Genii when this was all over. If. If the Asurans didn't kill him.
"Apply the sensory tabs," Basano-huh, right, Basano-said.
Rodney flinched as several sets of hands touched him all at once, but no pain came. After a few seconds, he registered that the Asurans were pressing small, sticky pads to his body-dozens of them, everywhere, from the soles of his feet to his forehead and scalp, clustered around his joints, on the insides of his elbows and the backs of his knees, his armpits, his chest and belly and back, his inner thighs, between his legs. He whimpered; those last few promised nothing good. Maybe they were recording devices, like a full-body polygraph machine? He could hope.
The Asurans stepped out of sight again, and Rodney tried to free himself just once more. Call it a fit of the sort of optimism in the face of impossible odds that had kept him alive and relatively whole during the past two years in Pegasus.
The bonds held. Of course. He sagged.
Basano stepped up beside him. "We will start simply. What is your name?"
Oh, thank God-he could tell them that. "McKay," he said promptly. No sense holding out on something they already knew. That it kept them from hurting him for the moment was a mere side benefit. "Rodney McKay. Well, Meredith Rodney McKay, technically, but please don't call me that, except now you will because I asked you not to, not that you could possibly appreciate the irony. As if this couldn't get any more humiliati-ow!"
There'd been some kind of brief but intense pain on the bottom of his right foot, gone before he could identify it. Maybe a sting? "Did something just bite me? Was that an insect?" He tried to raise his head to see, but only succeeded in making his neck hurt and his head pound harder. "I happen to be fatally allergic to bee stings, and if whatever just attacked me is in any way related to them, you're going to kill me a lot faster than you-ow!" Another quick twinge, sharp-or was it hot?-this time on the arch of his left foot. "Are those needles? Is this some kind of twisted acupuncture session? You did sterilize those beforehand, right? Because dying of blood poisoning was not on my li-" This time he broke off with a gasp as .
Basano leaned over him. "You talk, but you do not say anything of interest. That will soon change."
"Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, oh God, oh God stop."
Pain. Pain, everywhere, agonizing, excruciating, indescribable, unending. It was burns and frostbite and needles and pinches and punches and pepper spray and cat claws and anaphylactic shock and muscle cramps and broken bones and chicken pox and Ebola and electrocution and an acid bath, it was Kolya's knife and falling off his bike when he was six and the arrow in his ass on that planet with the Wraith-sellouts and Jeannie yanking his hair and his dentist drilling out cavities and the Siberian wind, it was-it was-
It was over.
Reality came back to him in pieces. His throat hurt. It was wet between his legs.
sounded like Brent Spiner
never going to be able to watch Star Trek again
"I am sorry it had to be this way, Dr. McKay."
"Proceed to the next phase."
"We do not experience sexual arousal. The Ancients did not think it necessary."
And oh Jesus, oh Jesus, they were crawling all over him, in him, through him, and he knew it wasn't scientifically possible but he could feel them, like being covered with tiny insects except on the inside.
or, or, oh God, brain-dead-living in an Ancient city for ten thousand years, maybe even rogue Ancients themselves, the Asurans could have the technology to glean any information they wanted straight from his brain, leave him a vegetable
* * *
In the movies, people always passed out when an injury or, say, torture by sadistic villains, got to be too much. At some point, the hero (or the damsel in distress, but Rodney was just not going to go there) succumbed to the pain and was granted a reprieve, however brief, in blissful oblivion.
Hollywood had let him down.
Throughout this whole ordeal-while the Asurans ___ and ___ and ___ him-he had remained awake. Aware. Conscious. Present.
English/Ancient Greek Dictionary: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/Woodhouse/
interrogate = επερωτώ, ανακρίνω
torture = τυραννώ, βάσανο, βασανιστήριο, βασανίζω
torturer = βασανιστής, δήμιος