Battle Scars (1/3)
Title: Battle Scars
Word Count: ~21,000
Rating: R
Characters: This is pretty much a Sheppard-only story
Warnings: Some violence, deals with a heavy serious issue
Summary: While searching for a missing team on a war-torn world, Sheppard is kidnapped and put to work, forcing him to stretch his skills in order to survive.
A/N: This story does deal with a fairly serious issue involving children and war, so the R-rating is for that.
Thank you to everybetty for the beta!! Also, I wrote most of this about a year ago for one of those H/C bingo card entries, and then just stopped. I have no idea why. When I pulled it up and dusted it off last week, I realized I just needed a few thousand more words to finish it off (so I did not, in fact, whip out a 21,000 word story in less than a week ;P).
Battle Scars
Part 1
It was easy to imagine that the shell of a city John was now kneeling in had once been majestic, full of gleaming high rises and millions of people living, working, eating, loving. There were glimpses here and there of what it had once been, but only if someone were really looking for them, and those hints were rapidly disappearing against the onslaught of endless guerilla warfare.
“Blue Team, report,” Sheppard barked into his radio. His knees were killing him, but he didn’t dare stand up to stretch. Ronon shifted next to him, scanning the ruined buildings.
“No movement here, sir,” a voice whispered over the radio. Blue Team leader.
John pinched his nose against a blossoming headache. They’d been searching the city for Stackhouse’s team for three days now without luck. A distant explosion echoed through the crumbling skyscrapers, but John didn’t flinch. The explosions were almost constant, more background noise than anything else now. Ghosts and shadows moved past the windows of the surrounding buildings, but John didn’t react to them either. The city was full of the thin, ragged survivors camped out anywhere they could find, and most of them ran out of sight the second any of John’s troops appeared in the streets.
The ones who didn’t run were slightly problematic. They had weapons, but they were more of the sticks and rocks and knives variety than projectile weapons-at least that’s all they’d seen so far. The recon teams had pierced the black unknowns of this world, gathering an impressive amount of intel in a very short period of time and revealing a land torn apart by decades-long civil war. The war itself had long since been abandoned, but by then it was too late. Both sides had fought themselves to near oblivion, leaving only a small percentage of scattered, desperate humanity.
“Orange Team?”
“Got a gang moving east through the streets here, sir. Looks like they’re coming from a fight, not looking for one.”
“Stay out of sight,” John whispered back, automatically lowering his voice. He glanced around the pile of rubble he was kneeling behind and scanned the empty street in front of them. The sun was setting, casting purple shadows at the bases of the skeletal buildings.
The recon teams had also learned that the city had since been divided and occupied by gangs that were made up of the relatively stronger and healthier survivors of the city. Those gangs had become territorial in the last several years, and had the unfortunate habit of pissing on each other’s street corners.
“Purple Team, what’s happening at the Hole?”
“All quiet here, sir. Saw a couple of kids running along the far side but they didn’t stick around long.” Sergeant Mackey’s voice, unlike the others, came through loud and clear.
John grimaced at the thought of kids playing around the hole. The Hole. One of the recon teams had come up with that particular euphemism, a crater blast at the edge of the city that had turned into a body dump. In the three days since they’d arrived, a steady stream of survivors-both gang members and stragglers-had thrown their dead and their garbage into the Hole. They’d caught glimpses of dirty, malnourished children running through the debris, oblivious to the stench and the rodents and insects that hovered over that entire area. In fact, they’d caught glimpses of children everywhere, never more than two or three at a time, and all of them unfazed by the disaster that made up their lives.
“By the way, sir,” Mackey said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “I thought we’d decided our name was Team Magenta, not Purple.”
Snickers and stifled grunts of laughter broke out around John, and he couldn’t help the grin that flit across his own face. Leave it to Mackey to break the tension with a wisecrack. John’s radio clicked twice, then Blue Team came across the line.
“Sir, if Purple Team is changing their name to Magenta, Blue Team respectively requests to change its name to Team Indigo.”
Shaking his head, John tapped his radio to cut off any more requests. “Tighten up,” he ordered but even he could hear the smile in his voice. “All teams pull back to base camp. We’re not getting any farther tonight. We’ll pick up again at first light.”
They would start the search again the next day, but John’s hopes of finding Stackhouse’s missing team alive and unharmed were dwindling. They had three jumpers on the ground back at their temporary base in the trees outside of the city limits, but the scanners had gone haywire almost as soon as they’d popped through the space gate. Whatever weapons had been used in the civil war had done a number on all of their equipment, though its effect on people seemed to be minimal now-as long as they didn’t stick around for more than a few years.
A few days was long enough. John signaled his team-consisting of himself, Ronon, Teyla, and three Marine sergeants-back the way they’d come, and they moved quickly through the streets. They were Black Team-Ronon’s choice. It hadn’t been very hard to talk Rodney into sitting this one out, though he’d acted a little hurt until he’d heard the mission involved camping out for an indeterminate number of days on the edge of a war zone. John smiled at the memory of the discussion. It had been the camping out part more than the war zone part that had been the most persuasive.
A distant blast brought his attention back to the current situation. The sun was still up, but the shadows were growing long by the time they hit the outskirts of the city. Purple Team, with Mackey leading the way, reached the tree line at the same time as Sheppard’s team, and the sergeant gave John a quick wave. Blue and Orange Teams had a longer trek, but they too would reach safety before it was too dark.
John turned his full attention to the sergeant, grinning. “Mackey, if I hear one more request to change-”
“Sir! Under fire-I’m under fire!”
The frantic voice cut through everyone, and John saw both teams freeze in their tracks, their knuckles whitening as they flexed their hands more tightly around their weapons.
“Who is this?” John called out. He recognized the voice, vaguely, but couldn’t pin a face to it.
“Lieutenant Glazner, sir. One of the gangs spotted me. I can see them fanning out.”
“Where are you, Glazner?”
The spitfire of crude weapons sounded over the radio and John turned back toward the city instinctively. “Keep your head down, Glazner. We’re on our way to you. What’s your position?”
“Sir, they’ve got projectile weapons. They’re-”
His voice cut out abruptly and John felt his gut tighten in dread. Glazner was a recon man, damn good at his job but not invisible. Or invincible.
“Glazner?” He forced his voice to stay level, fighting the urge to scream at the man to respond.
After a long pause, a ragged voice came through again. “Hit…I’m hit…can’t move…”
“Lieutenant, where are you?” John asked again. He wracked his brain, trying to remember exactly which direction the man had moved out that morning. The recon group had spread out, operating in one-man teams. It was easier to move through the city that way, easier to escape notice or detection.
“Near…Three Rings…right below…”
Three Rings-the name they’d given three round buildings, one right next to the other. John had seen them from the jumper when they’d flown over the city that morning and planned the day’s search patterns. He nodded to himself then looked up at the two teams standing in a loose semi-circle around him.
“Hang on, Lieutenant.” He let go of his radio and pointed at Mackey. “Get Purple Team back to base, make sure the other teams get there, too. Black Team will take this one.” He keyed his radio again. “Base, this is Sheppard. We need a medic-”
“Here, sir.”
The gruff voice sounded behind him, and John turned to see Corporal Paulsen running toward them from the trees. Paulsen was a huge man, and one of the best medics John had ever met-the next best thing to an actual medical doctor in the field. John signaled him forward, and they took off at a run back toward the city.
Paulsen caught up to John and ran alongside him, both hands wrapped around the straps of the duffel bag slung over his back. The first aid kits most field medics carried were at least half the size of Paulsen’s but the man refused to bring out anything smaller. John hadn’t argued; the man was fit enough to carry half the infirmary on his back, and if that’s what he needed to save John’s men, John sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him otherwise.
The top floors of the Three Rings appeared in the distance a few minutes later, and Black Team moved without the need for verbal communication. They didn’t know exactly where Lieutenant Glazner was, but they would find him. John felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end as adrenaline shot through him.
It was light enough still to see people moving through the streets and behind the dark, blown-out windows of the buildings, but most appeared to be running for cover, moving away from the fight. John’s team split up into pairs and spread out through the neighborhood, searching for their man on the ground. Paulsen stuck with John, and the two of them jogged down an alley. The occasional blast of a rifle echoed around them, but the shots were at least a block away from them.
John ran toward it. Whoever was shooting knew where the lieutenant was and would lead John’s team right to him. Paulsen didn’t say a word, as intent on reaching the injured Marine as everyone else. At the next corner, John paused, ducked his head around the side of the building in a quick sweep, then pulled back behind the cover of the wall. No shots erupted at his appearance, and he sighed in relief.
“Glazner is about halfway down that block,” John whispered. “Left side, against the building. There’s a pile of rocks in front of him, and a hole in the wall about ten feet up, not quite directly above him.”
Paulsen nodded, and John let the man slide past him to glance down the street and get his bearings. John radioed Glazner’s position to his other team members, then moved back to the corner.
A drumbeat of weapons fire echoed around him, and he flinched before he realized the sound was not directed at them. It was close, though, and he thought suddenly of the others moving along the streets around him.
“Black Team, report!” he whispered, forcing himself to keep a low volume. He glanced around the wall and spotted Glazner again, unmoving. His street was deathly still.
“Colonel,” one of his men called out over the radio, breathless. “We’re under fire from all sides. We managed to take cover but we are pinned down at the moment.”
“Where are they shooting from?”
“Second floor. Can’t get a bead on them.”
“Sheppard,” Ronon piped up. “Teyla and I can circle around to their position, maybe give them an opening to pull back.”
“Colonel,” Paulsen whispered, jerking his head down the street.
John glanced over at Glazner and could just see the man’s fist pounding against the cracked cement street. Paulsen was seconds from running to the injured Marine, to hell with the consequences. John scanned the second floor windows, gaping black holes that disappeared into nothing. He forced himself to study each visible window, then tapped his radio when he saw no hint of movement.
“Do it,” he ordered, nodding at Ronon’s brief acknowledgement. “The rest of you stay under cover. Glazner is in the clear for now. As soon as we get him, we’ll make our way back to you and we pull out together.”
Another hail of bullets echoed through the twilight, the sound resonating in his ear from his radio and drowning out the chorus of yes, sirs. With a deep breath, he raised his P90 and braced himself, catching Paulsen’s eyes and watching as the medic tensed. Seconds later, they darted into the street, and a minute after that, they reached Glazner’s side. No explosions went off; no gunfire peppered the street. The ease with which they’d managed to get to their man was strangely anti-climatic.
John dropped to his knees, taking in Glazner’s pale face scrunched up in pain. “Sleeping on the job again, Lieutenant? If you wanted a vacation, all you had to do was ask.”
A brief smile fluttered across Glazner’s face before dropping back into a grimace. Paulsen was on his other side, his medical bag open next to him. John glanced up and down the street, eyes scanning the dark shadows for any possible attackers, but he still saw no one. When he looked back at Glazner, he saw the lieutenant’s hands red with blood. Paulsen was pulling them away from his gut, and John scowled at the blood covering the dark uniform.
“Sir, I need your help,” Paulsen said, his voice low but intense.
John nodded and let go of his P90, letting it hang from the clip on his vest. Paulsen packed the lieutenant’s wound with bandages, then had John apply pressure. Glazner threw his head back with a moan, the agony of the sound piercing John’s chest.
“Hang on, Lieutenant. We’ll have you fixed up in no time,” Paulsen said, squeezing the Marine’s shoulder. He bent over his bag and began digging through its contents.
“Can’t… can’t feel… legs…” Glazner gasped.
John glanced down in surprise, feeling dread creep into his gut.
Paulsen jerked up at the lieutenant’s words but he kept his face neutral. “No worries, LT.”
Another volley of gunshots sounded from a few blocks away and John scanned the street again. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he pressed harder against the bandages on Glazner’s stomach, ignoring the man’s whimpering response.
“Got a stretcher in there?” John asked, nodding toward the bag.
“Yes, sir,” Paulsen answered. He pulled out an IV kit and set the saline bag on Glazner’s chest.
John’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he should have known better. Paulsen’s medic bag was the size of a duffel suitcase. Of course he had a collapsible stretcher. The Corporal dug his hand under Glazner’s body and frowned, meeting John’s gaze.
“No exit wound, sir. We’re going to have to-”
John felt the bullet before he heard it, a vibrating buzz next to his ear and a blast of hot air as it flew past his cheek, missing him by less than half an inch. He heard the dull thud of the bullet striking flesh but didn’t see it actually hit Paulsen. He looked up in time to see the medic pitch backward, dead before he hit the ground.
“Paulsen! Dammit!” John cried out. He snapped his head around looking for the source of the weapon’s fire and scrambled over Glazner. The lieutenant was only barely conscious, oblivious to the Marine lying dead next to him.
John didn’t bother searching for a pulse on the medic. The bullet had struck him in the neck, killing him instantly. He turned back to Glazner, taking in the blood still oozing from his wound. He would need help getting him out of here.
“Don’t move!”
John jerked up in surprise. He hadn’t heard anyone approach. A young man appeared in front of him, sliding out of the shadows, stringy dark hair pushed back behind his ears. He held a rifle loosely in both hands, the barrel not quite pointing directly at him. John kept his eyes on the man in front of him and moved his hand as slowly as possible toward the .45 holstered at his hip.
“He said, don’t move,” another voice hissed.
John cringed at the voice inches behind him, then flinched again when the end of a cold metal barrel was pressed against the back of his head. He felt his cheeks flush-anger, embarrassment, fear. Some combination of all three. He hadn’t heard any of them approach when he should have been hyper-aware, should have picked up on… something. Given Paulsen a chance to duck for cover, at least. He raised his hands, palms out in the most non-threatening gesture he could think of.
“What do you want?” John asked, and he was grateful that his voice sounded calm.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” the man in front of him said.
Like hell, John thought. He glared at him until he caught a flash of movement off to his side, and three more gang members appeared, taking up a position directly behind the man with the long rifle.
“This man is hurt,” John said, signaling Glazner with one hand. “I need to stop the bleeding.” John lowered one hand and pressed it against the red bandages on the lieutenant’s gut. He felt relief seep through him when Glazner groaned. He was still alive. There was still a chance to save him.
“You can help him?” Rifle Man asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s that bag on his chest?”
John glanced down. “It’s a saline bag. He’s bleeding heavily-I need to start an IV to get his blood pressure up.” He started dropping his other hand, but Rifle Man jerked the barrel of his weapon until it was pointing at John’s face. The gunman behind him poked him hard in the head.
“No one said you could move,” the gunman behind him growled. His voice was a little high-pitched and whiny, and John imagined a kid just a few years past puberty.
“You a giver then?” Rifle Man asked.
“A what?”
“A giver. Caregiver-a healer.”
John’s mind raced. The young men behind Rifle Man were glancing at each other, and beneath their tough exteriors, John saw them throwing furtive, desperate glances at each other. Did they need a doctor? Is that what they were asking him?
“I’m… uh… I’m trained…”
The kid behind him jabbed him in the head again. “He’s no giver, Ulam. I say we kill him and ask his friends.”
“Shut it, Biggie,” Rifle Man-Ulam-snapped. He pointed to Paulsen, then John. “They came straight for their injured man. Course he’s a giver.” He turned to John, squatting down to look him in the eye. “Right?”
The question was loaded. John could hear it. If he told them he was a giver, he lived at least a few more minutes. If not, he would be laid out next to Paulsen before he could blink, and then Glazner would have no chance whatsoever.
“Yes,” John said. What the hell was he getting himself into?
“That your stuff?” Ulam asked. At John’s nod, he ordered two of the guys behind him to grab him and the medic bag. “Finish the other one, Biggie.”
John looked down in alarm at Glazner. Oh, hell no. Glazner was unconscious now, his face slick with sweat and taking on a gray tinge. If he was breathing, it was too shallow for John to see. “He’s already dead,” John barked, hoping it wasn’t true. Glazner still had a chance. If Black Team could reach him fast enough, they could get the lieutenant back to the relative safety of base camp, and from there to Atlantis.
Glazner looked convincingly dead, enough so that Biggie didn’t shoot him. He stepped over Paulsen and John caught his first glimpse of him. He hadn’t been far off on guessing his age. The kid looked like he was no more than seventeen or eighteen, thin as a rail with a face scarred by acne. He had a small revolver in one hand that he tucked into the waistband of his pants.
The two gang members grabbed John by the arms, and John struggled just enough to toss the IV kit and saline bag on Glazner’s chest back into the medic bag. He zipped it up as he was jerked to his feet, and freed himself of the two strongmen’s grasp long enough to swing the bag onto his back.
“Let’s go,” Ulam ordered.
John glanced back one last time, hoping to see some sign from Glazner that he was still alive, but the injured man disappeared behind a mound of rocks and debris as John was shoved forward, deeper into the ravaged city.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The gang of boys had marched him less than a block down the street before throwing the blindfold on, almost as an afterthought. John hadn’t resisted. Ulam had proven far too effective with his rifle already. But the blindfold was only marginally useful. John had flown over the city and studied its layout enough times in the last three days that even dragged through the streets with a piece of cloth tied around his eyes, he still had a pretty good idea of where he was at, and he half hoped that whoever had grabbed him had also grabbed the missing team. It would be worth being kidnapped and held as a hostage if Stackhouse and his men were found in the end.
The air shifted around him, and the stench of unwashed bodies and urine amplified. He grit his teeth against the sudden urge to gag. He was inside one of the buildings and being pushed along what sounded like a narrow hallway. At the stairs, he tripped and would have landed face first if the two thugs didn’t still have a hold of his arms.
“Think you can take the blindfold off now?” he asked as they pulled him, stumbling, up the stairs.
No one said anything, but at the next landing, he felt a tug against the fabric and then the blindfold was ripped off. John blinked at the shadowy stairwell but Ulam and his gang didn’t wait for him to get his bearings. They pulled him up another five flights before shoving him out into a hallway.
The smell was marginally better on this floor, or John had just gotten used to it. He scanned the closed doorways and dirty walls, eyes raking through the trash swept to the sides for something he might be able to use later. Ulam led the way down the hall, his rifle swinging in one hand as he walked. The skinny kid-Biggie-walked directly behind him, and kept shooting glares at John over his shoulder.
At the end of the hall, Ulam knocked once, using his entire forearm. The door flew open a second later and another man stuck his head out. He had short dark hair and thick shoulders, and a thin scar running alongside his temple and curling under his eye.
“Found a giver,” Ulam said, and by the tone of his voice, John half expected him to add a sir at the end.
The man said nothing, just waved them inside. As John was pushed through the door, he looked around quickly, taking in as many details as he could. He’d expected to find an apartment, but it was a single, large room. There was ratty couch against one wall and a table at the center, covered in papers. Whatever this room had once been used for had long since been lost.
The man who’d answered the door spun around and looked John up and down, and John realized he was about as much a man as Biggie was, at least age-wise. Boys, all of them. Boys with guns and knives and clubs, but still boys. Ulam had looked older outside, in the streets, swinging his rifle around, but in here he looked as young as the others.
“Pleased to meet you,” John said when no one spoke for several long seconds.
The young man-obviously the leader by the way the others were reacting to him-swung his arm toward John’s face, catching John on the cheek with the back of his hand. He moved so fast that John had no time to react or brace himself, and his head snapped to the side, his cheek erupting in a burning sting.
“He’s a giver?” the man… boy… whatever… asked. “He don’t look it.”
“We shot one of his men,” Ulam answered. “He was trying to fix him.”
“You shot two of my men,” John said icily.
This time it was Ulam who swung toward him, planting the butt of his rifle into John’s gut. John’s breath whooshed out of him in a rush as his knees folded beneath him. The two thugs on either side of him tightened their grips, their fingers digging painfully into his arms as they kept him on his feet.
“You talk too much, filth,” the leader said, moving until he was right in John’s face. John blinked at the spit that flew out of the boy’s mouth but didn’t turn away.
“Hesh, he’s got loads of caregiver equipment in his bag,” Ulam said. “We saw it on the street.”
“Hesh, is it?” John asked. “My name’s John.”
Hesh swung at John’s face again, and John might have dodged had it not been for his two friends latched to his arms. The punch caught him squarely in the jaw, and he saw a flash of white at the impact. He blinked against sudden tears just in time to see Hesh jump back then forward again, burying his fist into John’s stomach and solar plexus twice.
John moaned, his legs giving out beneath him again. Nothing Hesh’s two thugs did could keep him standing this time, and they let him drop to the floor, his knees banging against solid tile. He tasted iron in his mouth, and he tried to spit the blood out but ended up dribbling it down his chin instead. His stomach was cramping, and he was panting to catch his breath.
Hesh stepped back, and John lifted his head. His vision was swimming. Hesh and his gang doubled then tripled in number before coalescing back into one.
“What do you want?” John asked. He’d meant to sound commanding, but his voice came out rough and hoarse, and he swallowed a mouthful of blood.
“We need a giver,” Hesh answered. “You’ll help, or you’re no use to us.”
He waited, looking at John expectantly. When his hand curled into another fist, John nodded, hoping that was the response the gang leader was looking for. Hesh moved in anyway, and John braced himself for another punch. Instead, he felt hands tugging at his vest and radio, stripping him of all weapons and equipment. The medic bag was flung to the side and searched hastily, then zipped up again.
John was left with only his black t-shirt, pants, and boots. The young man obviously knew how to search for hidden weapons. He’d even taken the small knife stashed in his boot. John sighed-his situation hadn’t been great to begin with, but it was growing worse, and there’d been no sign of Stackhouse’s team here yet. He flashed to Glazner, dying, and Paulsen, dead, back on the streets, but he pushed those thoughts aside, forcing himself to remain calm.
Hesh jerked his head to the side. “Take him to Tayven.”
“Wait!” John called out. “You kidnap my other team, too?”
Hesh frowned, confusion sweeping across his face for a moment before he scowled in anger. He didn’t answer, just jerked his head toward door, but the expression had been enough. He’d had no idea what John was talking about.
Great, he thought. Not only was his missing team still missing, he was gone too. Thug One and Thug Two dragged him out into the hall, moving back toward the stairwell. They passed two doors before he was finally able to get his feet back under him. They stopped in front of the next door, and Thug One let go of his arm to open it.
This was his chance to make a run for it. The hallway was empty besides the two of them, and both his guards were distracted, but John’s head was still ringing from Hesh’s punch to his jaw. He blinked, realizing he had the chance to escape about a half second before he was pulled into the room.
The room was smaller and darker than the other one, lit only by a tall lantern sitting on a narrow dresser on one side of the room. There were no windows, and the foul stench of body odor was almost a visible cloud. A bed sat against one wall, a dusty sofa chair sitting at its foot.
“That’s Tayven,” Thug Two said, gesturing toward the bed. They shoved John forward and tossed the medic bag in after him, then slammed the door the shut. The lock clicked shut and the sound of their footsteps disappeared back toward Hesh’s room.
John sank into the chair. His legs were shaking, and he sucked in a deep breath. He glanced at the bed and saw a pile of dirty blankets at the center. Unless Tayven was under the bed, the room appeared to be empty. He took a second to take stock of himself. His head was throbbing, but his sight had returned to normal. No more double and triple vision. The bruise along his jaw was already swelling but he opened and closed his mouth a few times, testing it out.
Nothing broken so far. His stomach was only marginally less painful than his head, and he leaned back into the chair slowly. He fingered his ribs, relieved when none of them screamed in agony at his poking. Maybe he would get through this. They seemed to need him alive for something; he just hoped to God it wasn’t surgery. He could feign being a “giver” to a point, but US military medical training-even as much as he’d had-would only take him so far.
He glanced around the room, wondering when Tayven would show up. Hesh had seemed like the leader in the room, but Tayven could be the big boss. He pushed himself out of the chair, noting with relief the lack of dizziness or lightheadedness. The narrow dresser in front of him looked old, its drawers and sides scratched and stained.
“Give me something good,” he muttered as he opened the top drawer. Two small pebbles rolled along the bottom. The second drawer was empty, and the third held a handful of paper with a script John didn’t recognized. They looked vaguely like letters, but the pages were old and stained yellow. The last drawer was equally as disappointing, holding a broken picture frame without either a picture or the glass that must of have held the picture in.
“Now glass would have been useful,” John said, glancing around the room. He turned toward the door then froze as an image caught in his peripheral vision.
A hand.
He twisted slowly, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. That’s Tayven, the guard had said and he’d pointed to the bed. John searched the pile of dirty blankets again, his eyes latching onto thin fingers poking out the top.
“Tayven?”
He got no response, not even a twitch of a finger, but he hadn’t really expected it. He reached out and pulled the blanket away from the bed, careful to keep his distance from any possible attackers underneath the covers.
“Oh, shit,” he breathed out.
A child lay in the center of the bed, sinking toward the floor in the center of the old mattress. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch at all to suddenly being exposed. He was curled up on his side, facing John, one arm stretched out above him to where the hand had poked out from under the edge of the blanket.
The stench was overwhelming, and John grimaced, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth and nose involuntarily. How had he not noticed this before? The blanket in his other hand reeked just as badly, and he tossed it toward the door. He studied the child a few more seconds, picking out pale skin and dark sunken eyes. The boy could have been anywhere from age eight to twelve, obviously malnourished and sick.
But not dead. John breathed a sigh of relief at the slight rise and fall of the boy’s chest. He moved closer, squatting down until he was eye-level with the child.
“Tayven?”
He reached a hand out and pressed his fingers against the boy’s forehead. The skin radiated heat. He had the medical bag Paulsen had packed, which probably included a reference manual of some sort, and as a special forces pilot, he’d had years of training in field medicine. John pulled his hand away and dragged it across his face. He’d treated soldiers in the field when the situation had called for it, but not all that often. Treating a seriously sick child was beginning to feel like a whole different ballgame.
But what choice did he have? This kid meant something to Hesh or one of the others in the gang, and John’s failure to help Tayven could very likely end in both of their deaths. He reached another hand out and started to push the boy onto his back.
His throat seized and he jerked away from the bed. In a split second, he’d seen a small insect scamper across the boy’s skin and disappear under the shirt. John raised the back of his hand to his mouth, the smell doubling and causing his stomach to churn. Behind him, he heard footsteps echoing doing the hall, growing louder as they approached the door.
John stood and swung around just as the door flew open and Hesh barged in, wielding a long, machete-sized knife in one hand. The young leader’s eyes widened at Tayven laying without covers on the bed. He turned to John, his expression hardening.
“Can you fix him?”
“What’s wrong with him?” John demanded, dropping his hands to his side and staring Hesh down.
“He’s sick.”
“With what? Why is he sick? What made him sick? How long has he been like this?”
Hesh had been staring at Tayven, but he snapped his head toward John, his eyes flashing. “You’re the giver. You tell me.”
John bit his lip, resisting the urge to snap back at him. He took a calming breath and held his hands out to his side. “I need more time to examine him, but the more you can tell me about his illness, the better chance I have of helping him.”
Hesh lashed out with his empty hand, catching John off guard for a second time with lightning fast reflexes. John caught the fist in the center of his chest and he stumbled backward against the blow.
“Goddammit!” John cursed, rubbing his hand against his breastbone. “Stop doing that!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Hesh screamed back.
The door to the room suddenly flew open, and John’s friends-Thug One and Thug Two-appeared in the doorway. They were armed now with short clubs, and they held them up menacingly as they stepped into the room.
“Get back,” Hesh snarled at them. “I got this.”
Their reaction was instantaneous and they retreated back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him. John waited, watching Hesh turn back to Tayven. The gang leader stepped toward the child, grief and fear replacing the anger for a brief moment.
“Is he your son?” John asked quietly.
Hesh turned toward him, anger simmering in his dark eyes. “My brother.”
“How long has he been sick?”
Hesh glanced down at the boy. “A couple days, maybe three. He was fine, he went to bed, then he woke up the next morning with burning skin. Sometimes he shakes like he’s cold, and he won’t eat.”
John scratched his cheek, his mind racing. He had no clue what was wrong with this kid, but he could tell just by looking at him that it was serious, and that he probably needed more than what John was capable of giving.
Bringing this kid back to Atlantis, though… John shook his head. That wasn’t going to happen. This was one sick kid in a burned out city filled with who knew how many other people in just as much need.
“You can’t help him?”
Hesh’s high-strung voice dragged John out of his thoughts, and he took a step back as the gang leader raised his machete knife.
“I’ll do what I can,” John answered, “but you have to listen to me. You have to do what I say.”
Hesh’s eyes narrowed, but he dropped the machete a second later and pointed at his brother. “Fix him.”
“I’ll try, but he’s really sick.”
“No, you fix him or you die,” Hesh hissed back.
John stifled another sigh and nodded his head. “Okay, fine.”
“You lie to me and I’ll cut you deep.”
“I got it,” John snapped, biting his lip when Hesh’s eyes flashed in anger. Damn, this guy is volatile. He’d have to tread carefully around him. “Look, he’s got bugs all over him. The first thing we need to do is get him cleaned up.”
“We all got bugs.”
“But he’s sick. I need water-hot water-and any clean sheets or blankets you have around here. Soap as well. Have you got those?”
Hesh was fuming, and looked on the verge of coming at John with the machete anyway, but at the last second, his eyes slid toward Tayven, and he gave a stiff nod. “We got water but no blankets, no soap.”
“Okay, fine. I can work with that,” John answered.
Hesh backed out of the room, slamming the door shut hard enough that dust rained down on him and Tayven from the ceiling. He heard orders being yelled outside the door for hot water, and footsteps pounding down the hallway. He leaned over and hefted the large medic bag onto the chair, unzipping it and studying the vast array of equipment and supplies.
“Okay, kid. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
TBC...
Part 2
Word Count: ~21,000
Rating: R
Characters: This is pretty much a Sheppard-only story
Warnings: Some violence, deals with a heavy serious issue
Summary: While searching for a missing team on a war-torn world, Sheppard is kidnapped and put to work, forcing him to stretch his skills in order to survive.
A/N: This story does deal with a fairly serious issue involving children and war, so the R-rating is for that.
Thank you to everybetty for the beta!! Also, I wrote most of this about a year ago for one of those H/C bingo card entries, and then just stopped. I have no idea why. When I pulled it up and dusted it off last week, I realized I just needed a few thousand more words to finish it off (so I did not, in fact, whip out a 21,000 word story in less than a week ;P).
Battle Scars
Part 1
It was easy to imagine that the shell of a city John was now kneeling in had once been majestic, full of gleaming high rises and millions of people living, working, eating, loving. There were glimpses here and there of what it had once been, but only if someone were really looking for them, and those hints were rapidly disappearing against the onslaught of endless guerilla warfare.
“Blue Team, report,” Sheppard barked into his radio. His knees were killing him, but he didn’t dare stand up to stretch. Ronon shifted next to him, scanning the ruined buildings.
“No movement here, sir,” a voice whispered over the radio. Blue Team leader.
John pinched his nose against a blossoming headache. They’d been searching the city for Stackhouse’s team for three days now without luck. A distant explosion echoed through the crumbling skyscrapers, but John didn’t flinch. The explosions were almost constant, more background noise than anything else now. Ghosts and shadows moved past the windows of the surrounding buildings, but John didn’t react to them either. The city was full of the thin, ragged survivors camped out anywhere they could find, and most of them ran out of sight the second any of John’s troops appeared in the streets.
The ones who didn’t run were slightly problematic. They had weapons, but they were more of the sticks and rocks and knives variety than projectile weapons-at least that’s all they’d seen so far. The recon teams had pierced the black unknowns of this world, gathering an impressive amount of intel in a very short period of time and revealing a land torn apart by decades-long civil war. The war itself had long since been abandoned, but by then it was too late. Both sides had fought themselves to near oblivion, leaving only a small percentage of scattered, desperate humanity.
“Orange Team?”
“Got a gang moving east through the streets here, sir. Looks like they’re coming from a fight, not looking for one.”
“Stay out of sight,” John whispered back, automatically lowering his voice. He glanced around the pile of rubble he was kneeling behind and scanned the empty street in front of them. The sun was setting, casting purple shadows at the bases of the skeletal buildings.
The recon teams had also learned that the city had since been divided and occupied by gangs that were made up of the relatively stronger and healthier survivors of the city. Those gangs had become territorial in the last several years, and had the unfortunate habit of pissing on each other’s street corners.
“Purple Team, what’s happening at the Hole?”
“All quiet here, sir. Saw a couple of kids running along the far side but they didn’t stick around long.” Sergeant Mackey’s voice, unlike the others, came through loud and clear.
John grimaced at the thought of kids playing around the hole. The Hole. One of the recon teams had come up with that particular euphemism, a crater blast at the edge of the city that had turned into a body dump. In the three days since they’d arrived, a steady stream of survivors-both gang members and stragglers-had thrown their dead and their garbage into the Hole. They’d caught glimpses of dirty, malnourished children running through the debris, oblivious to the stench and the rodents and insects that hovered over that entire area. In fact, they’d caught glimpses of children everywhere, never more than two or three at a time, and all of them unfazed by the disaster that made up their lives.
“By the way, sir,” Mackey said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “I thought we’d decided our name was Team Magenta, not Purple.”
Snickers and stifled grunts of laughter broke out around John, and he couldn’t help the grin that flit across his own face. Leave it to Mackey to break the tension with a wisecrack. John’s radio clicked twice, then Blue Team came across the line.
“Sir, if Purple Team is changing their name to Magenta, Blue Team respectively requests to change its name to Team Indigo.”
Shaking his head, John tapped his radio to cut off any more requests. “Tighten up,” he ordered but even he could hear the smile in his voice. “All teams pull back to base camp. We’re not getting any farther tonight. We’ll pick up again at first light.”
They would start the search again the next day, but John’s hopes of finding Stackhouse’s missing team alive and unharmed were dwindling. They had three jumpers on the ground back at their temporary base in the trees outside of the city limits, but the scanners had gone haywire almost as soon as they’d popped through the space gate. Whatever weapons had been used in the civil war had done a number on all of their equipment, though its effect on people seemed to be minimal now-as long as they didn’t stick around for more than a few years.
A few days was long enough. John signaled his team-consisting of himself, Ronon, Teyla, and three Marine sergeants-back the way they’d come, and they moved quickly through the streets. They were Black Team-Ronon’s choice. It hadn’t been very hard to talk Rodney into sitting this one out, though he’d acted a little hurt until he’d heard the mission involved camping out for an indeterminate number of days on the edge of a war zone. John smiled at the memory of the discussion. It had been the camping out part more than the war zone part that had been the most persuasive.
A distant blast brought his attention back to the current situation. The sun was still up, but the shadows were growing long by the time they hit the outskirts of the city. Purple Team, with Mackey leading the way, reached the tree line at the same time as Sheppard’s team, and the sergeant gave John a quick wave. Blue and Orange Teams had a longer trek, but they too would reach safety before it was too dark.
John turned his full attention to the sergeant, grinning. “Mackey, if I hear one more request to change-”
“Sir! Under fire-I’m under fire!”
The frantic voice cut through everyone, and John saw both teams freeze in their tracks, their knuckles whitening as they flexed their hands more tightly around their weapons.
“Who is this?” John called out. He recognized the voice, vaguely, but couldn’t pin a face to it.
“Lieutenant Glazner, sir. One of the gangs spotted me. I can see them fanning out.”
“Where are you, Glazner?”
The spitfire of crude weapons sounded over the radio and John turned back toward the city instinctively. “Keep your head down, Glazner. We’re on our way to you. What’s your position?”
“Sir, they’ve got projectile weapons. They’re-”
His voice cut out abruptly and John felt his gut tighten in dread. Glazner was a recon man, damn good at his job but not invisible. Or invincible.
“Glazner?” He forced his voice to stay level, fighting the urge to scream at the man to respond.
After a long pause, a ragged voice came through again. “Hit…I’m hit…can’t move…”
“Lieutenant, where are you?” John asked again. He wracked his brain, trying to remember exactly which direction the man had moved out that morning. The recon group had spread out, operating in one-man teams. It was easier to move through the city that way, easier to escape notice or detection.
“Near…Three Rings…right below…”
Three Rings-the name they’d given three round buildings, one right next to the other. John had seen them from the jumper when they’d flown over the city that morning and planned the day’s search patterns. He nodded to himself then looked up at the two teams standing in a loose semi-circle around him.
“Hang on, Lieutenant.” He let go of his radio and pointed at Mackey. “Get Purple Team back to base, make sure the other teams get there, too. Black Team will take this one.” He keyed his radio again. “Base, this is Sheppard. We need a medic-”
“Here, sir.”
The gruff voice sounded behind him, and John turned to see Corporal Paulsen running toward them from the trees. Paulsen was a huge man, and one of the best medics John had ever met-the next best thing to an actual medical doctor in the field. John signaled him forward, and they took off at a run back toward the city.
Paulsen caught up to John and ran alongside him, both hands wrapped around the straps of the duffel bag slung over his back. The first aid kits most field medics carried were at least half the size of Paulsen’s but the man refused to bring out anything smaller. John hadn’t argued; the man was fit enough to carry half the infirmary on his back, and if that’s what he needed to save John’s men, John sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him otherwise.
The top floors of the Three Rings appeared in the distance a few minutes later, and Black Team moved without the need for verbal communication. They didn’t know exactly where Lieutenant Glazner was, but they would find him. John felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end as adrenaline shot through him.
It was light enough still to see people moving through the streets and behind the dark, blown-out windows of the buildings, but most appeared to be running for cover, moving away from the fight. John’s team split up into pairs and spread out through the neighborhood, searching for their man on the ground. Paulsen stuck with John, and the two of them jogged down an alley. The occasional blast of a rifle echoed around them, but the shots were at least a block away from them.
John ran toward it. Whoever was shooting knew where the lieutenant was and would lead John’s team right to him. Paulsen didn’t say a word, as intent on reaching the injured Marine as everyone else. At the next corner, John paused, ducked his head around the side of the building in a quick sweep, then pulled back behind the cover of the wall. No shots erupted at his appearance, and he sighed in relief.
“Glazner is about halfway down that block,” John whispered. “Left side, against the building. There’s a pile of rocks in front of him, and a hole in the wall about ten feet up, not quite directly above him.”
Paulsen nodded, and John let the man slide past him to glance down the street and get his bearings. John radioed Glazner’s position to his other team members, then moved back to the corner.
A drumbeat of weapons fire echoed around him, and he flinched before he realized the sound was not directed at them. It was close, though, and he thought suddenly of the others moving along the streets around him.
“Black Team, report!” he whispered, forcing himself to keep a low volume. He glanced around the wall and spotted Glazner again, unmoving. His street was deathly still.
“Colonel,” one of his men called out over the radio, breathless. “We’re under fire from all sides. We managed to take cover but we are pinned down at the moment.”
“Where are they shooting from?”
“Second floor. Can’t get a bead on them.”
“Sheppard,” Ronon piped up. “Teyla and I can circle around to their position, maybe give them an opening to pull back.”
“Colonel,” Paulsen whispered, jerking his head down the street.
John glanced over at Glazner and could just see the man’s fist pounding against the cracked cement street. Paulsen was seconds from running to the injured Marine, to hell with the consequences. John scanned the second floor windows, gaping black holes that disappeared into nothing. He forced himself to study each visible window, then tapped his radio when he saw no hint of movement.
“Do it,” he ordered, nodding at Ronon’s brief acknowledgement. “The rest of you stay under cover. Glazner is in the clear for now. As soon as we get him, we’ll make our way back to you and we pull out together.”
Another hail of bullets echoed through the twilight, the sound resonating in his ear from his radio and drowning out the chorus of yes, sirs. With a deep breath, he raised his P90 and braced himself, catching Paulsen’s eyes and watching as the medic tensed. Seconds later, they darted into the street, and a minute after that, they reached Glazner’s side. No explosions went off; no gunfire peppered the street. The ease with which they’d managed to get to their man was strangely anti-climatic.
John dropped to his knees, taking in Glazner’s pale face scrunched up in pain. “Sleeping on the job again, Lieutenant? If you wanted a vacation, all you had to do was ask.”
A brief smile fluttered across Glazner’s face before dropping back into a grimace. Paulsen was on his other side, his medical bag open next to him. John glanced up and down the street, eyes scanning the dark shadows for any possible attackers, but he still saw no one. When he looked back at Glazner, he saw the lieutenant’s hands red with blood. Paulsen was pulling them away from his gut, and John scowled at the blood covering the dark uniform.
“Sir, I need your help,” Paulsen said, his voice low but intense.
John nodded and let go of his P90, letting it hang from the clip on his vest. Paulsen packed the lieutenant’s wound with bandages, then had John apply pressure. Glazner threw his head back with a moan, the agony of the sound piercing John’s chest.
“Hang on, Lieutenant. We’ll have you fixed up in no time,” Paulsen said, squeezing the Marine’s shoulder. He bent over his bag and began digging through its contents.
“Can’t… can’t feel… legs…” Glazner gasped.
John glanced down in surprise, feeling dread creep into his gut.
Paulsen jerked up at the lieutenant’s words but he kept his face neutral. “No worries, LT.”
Another volley of gunshots sounded from a few blocks away and John scanned the street again. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he pressed harder against the bandages on Glazner’s stomach, ignoring the man’s whimpering response.
“Got a stretcher in there?” John asked, nodding toward the bag.
“Yes, sir,” Paulsen answered. He pulled out an IV kit and set the saline bag on Glazner’s chest.
John’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he should have known better. Paulsen’s medic bag was the size of a duffel suitcase. Of course he had a collapsible stretcher. The Corporal dug his hand under Glazner’s body and frowned, meeting John’s gaze.
“No exit wound, sir. We’re going to have to-”
John felt the bullet before he heard it, a vibrating buzz next to his ear and a blast of hot air as it flew past his cheek, missing him by less than half an inch. He heard the dull thud of the bullet striking flesh but didn’t see it actually hit Paulsen. He looked up in time to see the medic pitch backward, dead before he hit the ground.
“Paulsen! Dammit!” John cried out. He snapped his head around looking for the source of the weapon’s fire and scrambled over Glazner. The lieutenant was only barely conscious, oblivious to the Marine lying dead next to him.
John didn’t bother searching for a pulse on the medic. The bullet had struck him in the neck, killing him instantly. He turned back to Glazner, taking in the blood still oozing from his wound. He would need help getting him out of here.
“Don’t move!”
John jerked up in surprise. He hadn’t heard anyone approach. A young man appeared in front of him, sliding out of the shadows, stringy dark hair pushed back behind his ears. He held a rifle loosely in both hands, the barrel not quite pointing directly at him. John kept his eyes on the man in front of him and moved his hand as slowly as possible toward the .45 holstered at his hip.
“He said, don’t move,” another voice hissed.
John cringed at the voice inches behind him, then flinched again when the end of a cold metal barrel was pressed against the back of his head. He felt his cheeks flush-anger, embarrassment, fear. Some combination of all three. He hadn’t heard any of them approach when he should have been hyper-aware, should have picked up on… something. Given Paulsen a chance to duck for cover, at least. He raised his hands, palms out in the most non-threatening gesture he could think of.
“What do you want?” John asked, and he was grateful that his voice sounded calm.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” the man in front of him said.
Like hell, John thought. He glared at him until he caught a flash of movement off to his side, and three more gang members appeared, taking up a position directly behind the man with the long rifle.
“This man is hurt,” John said, signaling Glazner with one hand. “I need to stop the bleeding.” John lowered one hand and pressed it against the red bandages on the lieutenant’s gut. He felt relief seep through him when Glazner groaned. He was still alive. There was still a chance to save him.
“You can help him?” Rifle Man asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s that bag on his chest?”
John glanced down. “It’s a saline bag. He’s bleeding heavily-I need to start an IV to get his blood pressure up.” He started dropping his other hand, but Rifle Man jerked the barrel of his weapon until it was pointing at John’s face. The gunman behind him poked him hard in the head.
“No one said you could move,” the gunman behind him growled. His voice was a little high-pitched and whiny, and John imagined a kid just a few years past puberty.
“You a giver then?” Rifle Man asked.
“A what?”
“A giver. Caregiver-a healer.”
John’s mind raced. The young men behind Rifle Man were glancing at each other, and beneath their tough exteriors, John saw them throwing furtive, desperate glances at each other. Did they need a doctor? Is that what they were asking him?
“I’m… uh… I’m trained…”
The kid behind him jabbed him in the head again. “He’s no giver, Ulam. I say we kill him and ask his friends.”
“Shut it, Biggie,” Rifle Man-Ulam-snapped. He pointed to Paulsen, then John. “They came straight for their injured man. Course he’s a giver.” He turned to John, squatting down to look him in the eye. “Right?”
The question was loaded. John could hear it. If he told them he was a giver, he lived at least a few more minutes. If not, he would be laid out next to Paulsen before he could blink, and then Glazner would have no chance whatsoever.
“Yes,” John said. What the hell was he getting himself into?
“That your stuff?” Ulam asked. At John’s nod, he ordered two of the guys behind him to grab him and the medic bag. “Finish the other one, Biggie.”
John looked down in alarm at Glazner. Oh, hell no. Glazner was unconscious now, his face slick with sweat and taking on a gray tinge. If he was breathing, it was too shallow for John to see. “He’s already dead,” John barked, hoping it wasn’t true. Glazner still had a chance. If Black Team could reach him fast enough, they could get the lieutenant back to the relative safety of base camp, and from there to Atlantis.
Glazner looked convincingly dead, enough so that Biggie didn’t shoot him. He stepped over Paulsen and John caught his first glimpse of him. He hadn’t been far off on guessing his age. The kid looked like he was no more than seventeen or eighteen, thin as a rail with a face scarred by acne. He had a small revolver in one hand that he tucked into the waistband of his pants.
The two gang members grabbed John by the arms, and John struggled just enough to toss the IV kit and saline bag on Glazner’s chest back into the medic bag. He zipped it up as he was jerked to his feet, and freed himself of the two strongmen’s grasp long enough to swing the bag onto his back.
“Let’s go,” Ulam ordered.
John glanced back one last time, hoping to see some sign from Glazner that he was still alive, but the injured man disappeared behind a mound of rocks and debris as John was shoved forward, deeper into the ravaged city.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The gang of boys had marched him less than a block down the street before throwing the blindfold on, almost as an afterthought. John hadn’t resisted. Ulam had proven far too effective with his rifle already. But the blindfold was only marginally useful. John had flown over the city and studied its layout enough times in the last three days that even dragged through the streets with a piece of cloth tied around his eyes, he still had a pretty good idea of where he was at, and he half hoped that whoever had grabbed him had also grabbed the missing team. It would be worth being kidnapped and held as a hostage if Stackhouse and his men were found in the end.
The air shifted around him, and the stench of unwashed bodies and urine amplified. He grit his teeth against the sudden urge to gag. He was inside one of the buildings and being pushed along what sounded like a narrow hallway. At the stairs, he tripped and would have landed face first if the two thugs didn’t still have a hold of his arms.
“Think you can take the blindfold off now?” he asked as they pulled him, stumbling, up the stairs.
No one said anything, but at the next landing, he felt a tug against the fabric and then the blindfold was ripped off. John blinked at the shadowy stairwell but Ulam and his gang didn’t wait for him to get his bearings. They pulled him up another five flights before shoving him out into a hallway.
The smell was marginally better on this floor, or John had just gotten used to it. He scanned the closed doorways and dirty walls, eyes raking through the trash swept to the sides for something he might be able to use later. Ulam led the way down the hall, his rifle swinging in one hand as he walked. The skinny kid-Biggie-walked directly behind him, and kept shooting glares at John over his shoulder.
At the end of the hall, Ulam knocked once, using his entire forearm. The door flew open a second later and another man stuck his head out. He had short dark hair and thick shoulders, and a thin scar running alongside his temple and curling under his eye.
“Found a giver,” Ulam said, and by the tone of his voice, John half expected him to add a sir at the end.
The man said nothing, just waved them inside. As John was pushed through the door, he looked around quickly, taking in as many details as he could. He’d expected to find an apartment, but it was a single, large room. There was ratty couch against one wall and a table at the center, covered in papers. Whatever this room had once been used for had long since been lost.
The man who’d answered the door spun around and looked John up and down, and John realized he was about as much a man as Biggie was, at least age-wise. Boys, all of them. Boys with guns and knives and clubs, but still boys. Ulam had looked older outside, in the streets, swinging his rifle around, but in here he looked as young as the others.
“Pleased to meet you,” John said when no one spoke for several long seconds.
The young man-obviously the leader by the way the others were reacting to him-swung his arm toward John’s face, catching John on the cheek with the back of his hand. He moved so fast that John had no time to react or brace himself, and his head snapped to the side, his cheek erupting in a burning sting.
“He’s a giver?” the man… boy… whatever… asked. “He don’t look it.”
“We shot one of his men,” Ulam answered. “He was trying to fix him.”
“You shot two of my men,” John said icily.
This time it was Ulam who swung toward him, planting the butt of his rifle into John’s gut. John’s breath whooshed out of him in a rush as his knees folded beneath him. The two thugs on either side of him tightened their grips, their fingers digging painfully into his arms as they kept him on his feet.
“You talk too much, filth,” the leader said, moving until he was right in John’s face. John blinked at the spit that flew out of the boy’s mouth but didn’t turn away.
“Hesh, he’s got loads of caregiver equipment in his bag,” Ulam said. “We saw it on the street.”
“Hesh, is it?” John asked. “My name’s John.”
Hesh swung at John’s face again, and John might have dodged had it not been for his two friends latched to his arms. The punch caught him squarely in the jaw, and he saw a flash of white at the impact. He blinked against sudden tears just in time to see Hesh jump back then forward again, burying his fist into John’s stomach and solar plexus twice.
John moaned, his legs giving out beneath him again. Nothing Hesh’s two thugs did could keep him standing this time, and they let him drop to the floor, his knees banging against solid tile. He tasted iron in his mouth, and he tried to spit the blood out but ended up dribbling it down his chin instead. His stomach was cramping, and he was panting to catch his breath.
Hesh stepped back, and John lifted his head. His vision was swimming. Hesh and his gang doubled then tripled in number before coalescing back into one.
“What do you want?” John asked. He’d meant to sound commanding, but his voice came out rough and hoarse, and he swallowed a mouthful of blood.
“We need a giver,” Hesh answered. “You’ll help, or you’re no use to us.”
He waited, looking at John expectantly. When his hand curled into another fist, John nodded, hoping that was the response the gang leader was looking for. Hesh moved in anyway, and John braced himself for another punch. Instead, he felt hands tugging at his vest and radio, stripping him of all weapons and equipment. The medic bag was flung to the side and searched hastily, then zipped up again.
John was left with only his black t-shirt, pants, and boots. The young man obviously knew how to search for hidden weapons. He’d even taken the small knife stashed in his boot. John sighed-his situation hadn’t been great to begin with, but it was growing worse, and there’d been no sign of Stackhouse’s team here yet. He flashed to Glazner, dying, and Paulsen, dead, back on the streets, but he pushed those thoughts aside, forcing himself to remain calm.
Hesh jerked his head to the side. “Take him to Tayven.”
“Wait!” John called out. “You kidnap my other team, too?”
Hesh frowned, confusion sweeping across his face for a moment before he scowled in anger. He didn’t answer, just jerked his head toward door, but the expression had been enough. He’d had no idea what John was talking about.
Great, he thought. Not only was his missing team still missing, he was gone too. Thug One and Thug Two dragged him out into the hall, moving back toward the stairwell. They passed two doors before he was finally able to get his feet back under him. They stopped in front of the next door, and Thug One let go of his arm to open it.
This was his chance to make a run for it. The hallway was empty besides the two of them, and both his guards were distracted, but John’s head was still ringing from Hesh’s punch to his jaw. He blinked, realizing he had the chance to escape about a half second before he was pulled into the room.
The room was smaller and darker than the other one, lit only by a tall lantern sitting on a narrow dresser on one side of the room. There were no windows, and the foul stench of body odor was almost a visible cloud. A bed sat against one wall, a dusty sofa chair sitting at its foot.
“That’s Tayven,” Thug Two said, gesturing toward the bed. They shoved John forward and tossed the medic bag in after him, then slammed the door the shut. The lock clicked shut and the sound of their footsteps disappeared back toward Hesh’s room.
John sank into the chair. His legs were shaking, and he sucked in a deep breath. He glanced at the bed and saw a pile of dirty blankets at the center. Unless Tayven was under the bed, the room appeared to be empty. He took a second to take stock of himself. His head was throbbing, but his sight had returned to normal. No more double and triple vision. The bruise along his jaw was already swelling but he opened and closed his mouth a few times, testing it out.
Nothing broken so far. His stomach was only marginally less painful than his head, and he leaned back into the chair slowly. He fingered his ribs, relieved when none of them screamed in agony at his poking. Maybe he would get through this. They seemed to need him alive for something; he just hoped to God it wasn’t surgery. He could feign being a “giver” to a point, but US military medical training-even as much as he’d had-would only take him so far.
He glanced around the room, wondering when Tayven would show up. Hesh had seemed like the leader in the room, but Tayven could be the big boss. He pushed himself out of the chair, noting with relief the lack of dizziness or lightheadedness. The narrow dresser in front of him looked old, its drawers and sides scratched and stained.
“Give me something good,” he muttered as he opened the top drawer. Two small pebbles rolled along the bottom. The second drawer was empty, and the third held a handful of paper with a script John didn’t recognized. They looked vaguely like letters, but the pages were old and stained yellow. The last drawer was equally as disappointing, holding a broken picture frame without either a picture or the glass that must of have held the picture in.
“Now glass would have been useful,” John said, glancing around the room. He turned toward the door then froze as an image caught in his peripheral vision.
A hand.
He twisted slowly, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. That’s Tayven, the guard had said and he’d pointed to the bed. John searched the pile of dirty blankets again, his eyes latching onto thin fingers poking out the top.
“Tayven?”
He got no response, not even a twitch of a finger, but he hadn’t really expected it. He reached out and pulled the blanket away from the bed, careful to keep his distance from any possible attackers underneath the covers.
“Oh, shit,” he breathed out.
A child lay in the center of the bed, sinking toward the floor in the center of the old mattress. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch at all to suddenly being exposed. He was curled up on his side, facing John, one arm stretched out above him to where the hand had poked out from under the edge of the blanket.
The stench was overwhelming, and John grimaced, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth and nose involuntarily. How had he not noticed this before? The blanket in his other hand reeked just as badly, and he tossed it toward the door. He studied the child a few more seconds, picking out pale skin and dark sunken eyes. The boy could have been anywhere from age eight to twelve, obviously malnourished and sick.
But not dead. John breathed a sigh of relief at the slight rise and fall of the boy’s chest. He moved closer, squatting down until he was eye-level with the child.
“Tayven?”
He reached a hand out and pressed his fingers against the boy’s forehead. The skin radiated heat. He had the medical bag Paulsen had packed, which probably included a reference manual of some sort, and as a special forces pilot, he’d had years of training in field medicine. John pulled his hand away and dragged it across his face. He’d treated soldiers in the field when the situation had called for it, but not all that often. Treating a seriously sick child was beginning to feel like a whole different ballgame.
But what choice did he have? This kid meant something to Hesh or one of the others in the gang, and John’s failure to help Tayven could very likely end in both of their deaths. He reached another hand out and started to push the boy onto his back.
His throat seized and he jerked away from the bed. In a split second, he’d seen a small insect scamper across the boy’s skin and disappear under the shirt. John raised the back of his hand to his mouth, the smell doubling and causing his stomach to churn. Behind him, he heard footsteps echoing doing the hall, growing louder as they approached the door.
John stood and swung around just as the door flew open and Hesh barged in, wielding a long, machete-sized knife in one hand. The young leader’s eyes widened at Tayven laying without covers on the bed. He turned to John, his expression hardening.
“Can you fix him?”
“What’s wrong with him?” John demanded, dropping his hands to his side and staring Hesh down.
“He’s sick.”
“With what? Why is he sick? What made him sick? How long has he been like this?”
Hesh had been staring at Tayven, but he snapped his head toward John, his eyes flashing. “You’re the giver. You tell me.”
John bit his lip, resisting the urge to snap back at him. He took a calming breath and held his hands out to his side. “I need more time to examine him, but the more you can tell me about his illness, the better chance I have of helping him.”
Hesh lashed out with his empty hand, catching John off guard for a second time with lightning fast reflexes. John caught the fist in the center of his chest and he stumbled backward against the blow.
“Goddammit!” John cursed, rubbing his hand against his breastbone. “Stop doing that!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Hesh screamed back.
The door to the room suddenly flew open, and John’s friends-Thug One and Thug Two-appeared in the doorway. They were armed now with short clubs, and they held them up menacingly as they stepped into the room.
“Get back,” Hesh snarled at them. “I got this.”
Their reaction was instantaneous and they retreated back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him. John waited, watching Hesh turn back to Tayven. The gang leader stepped toward the child, grief and fear replacing the anger for a brief moment.
“Is he your son?” John asked quietly.
Hesh turned toward him, anger simmering in his dark eyes. “My brother.”
“How long has he been sick?”
Hesh glanced down at the boy. “A couple days, maybe three. He was fine, he went to bed, then he woke up the next morning with burning skin. Sometimes he shakes like he’s cold, and he won’t eat.”
John scratched his cheek, his mind racing. He had no clue what was wrong with this kid, but he could tell just by looking at him that it was serious, and that he probably needed more than what John was capable of giving.
Bringing this kid back to Atlantis, though… John shook his head. That wasn’t going to happen. This was one sick kid in a burned out city filled with who knew how many other people in just as much need.
“You can’t help him?”
Hesh’s high-strung voice dragged John out of his thoughts, and he took a step back as the gang leader raised his machete knife.
“I’ll do what I can,” John answered, “but you have to listen to me. You have to do what I say.”
Hesh’s eyes narrowed, but he dropped the machete a second later and pointed at his brother. “Fix him.”
“I’ll try, but he’s really sick.”
“No, you fix him or you die,” Hesh hissed back.
John stifled another sigh and nodded his head. “Okay, fine.”
“You lie to me and I’ll cut you deep.”
“I got it,” John snapped, biting his lip when Hesh’s eyes flashed in anger. Damn, this guy is volatile. He’d have to tread carefully around him. “Look, he’s got bugs all over him. The first thing we need to do is get him cleaned up.”
“We all got bugs.”
“But he’s sick. I need water-hot water-and any clean sheets or blankets you have around here. Soap as well. Have you got those?”
Hesh was fuming, and looked on the verge of coming at John with the machete anyway, but at the last second, his eyes slid toward Tayven, and he gave a stiff nod. “We got water but no blankets, no soap.”
“Okay, fine. I can work with that,” John answered.
Hesh backed out of the room, slamming the door shut hard enough that dust rained down on him and Tayven from the ceiling. He heard orders being yelled outside the door for hot water, and footsteps pounding down the hallway. He leaned over and hefted the large medic bag onto the chair, unzipping it and studying the vast array of equipment and supplies.
“Okay, kid. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
TBC...
Part 2