Of the Sand 9
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Chapter Nine: Interrogation Tactics
When Jack woke up he was in an interrogation room, or at least what he assumed to be an interrogation room. It was small, bland, with only a table and chairs bolted to the floor and all of those elements suggested an interrogation room, but the thing that was the clincher was the large mirror stretching across the wall that Jack was facing. Yep, Jack was certain that this was an interrogation room that he was in.
“Well, crap,” he muttered. At least he wasn’t handcuffed or tied down to anything, although he wasn’t sure if he would be able to escape, either. Still, it was better than the places he usually ended up in - the places that he had thought that he would no longer end up in. The thing about being locked in an interrogation room was that he had no idea where the rest of his group was and then there was the fact that Daniel was still sick and half a day away.
Jack did not have to wait long until the door opened and a man entered the room. The man looked pretty nondescript, but he reminded Jack of all of the black ops soldiers than he had known. Not only in the way that he moved, but by the sculpted, black clothes that he wore and the poker face that he had on. The only thing out of place from the black ops look was the headband that the man wore with the metal plate that had some sort of symbol on it. It reminded Jack of the letter ‘i’ written in that strange bubble letter font.
“So, do you normally knock people out for no reason in the middle of the night?” Jack asked, leaning back in his chair and raising his eyebrows at the guy.
“You were witnessed breaking into the clinic,” the guy said, vaguely looking as though Jack should try to pull the other one.
“Breaking into the clinic?” Jack tried the clueless route.
“I wouldn’t try to pull one over on me, kid, because it’s not going to work,” the guy scoffed. “Right now you’re here for breaking and entering and also under suspicion of kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Jack blurted out. “Who?”
“The Kazekage’s children,” the guy answered, glaring at Jack.
Jack blinked to himself, wondering who on earth the Kazekage was. “Temari and her brothers?” Jack hazarded a guess.
“You want to tell me what you were doing breaking into the clinic with the Kazekage’s children?” the man asked in reply.
Jack shrugged. “We met them outside the clinic and they decided to tag along. If I had known that people would freak out, I would have sent them off to bed.” Jack smirked. “Unless you regularly knock people out when arresting them.”
“What were you doing breaking into the clinic?” the man asked.
“What were you doing spying on us?” Jack shot back.
“Not doing anything illegal; that’s what you were doing.” The man scowled at Jack. “Now, spill.”
“What do people normally do when they go to a clinic?” Jack replied.
“They wait until the building is opened and they make an appointment, just like everyone else,” the man answered. “Most importantly, they’re examined by a doctor and they don’t prescribe themselves.” The man dropped a bottle of pills onto the table. Jack vaguely recognized it as one of the bottles that Janet picked out from the clinic.
“Those aren’t for me,” Jack informed the man.
“Then who are they for?” the man asked, clearly not believing him.
“Look, we have a friend at home who’s sick,” Jack caved. He motioned towards the pills on the table. “Those are supposed to make him better.”
“On whose authority?” the man asked.
“My redheaded friend knows more than she looks like she does,” Jack answered, figuring that it was better than ‘my friend is really forty one years old and a trained medical professional.’ The truth didn’t really sound believable and he figured that he was in enough trouble already without the guy deciding that he was lying. And, on the other side, he didn’t want to chance the guy believing his story and insisting on an answer that Jack really didn’t want to give. So, he would go with a cover story - at least this time it wasn’t ‘deep space radar telemetry.’
The guy frowned at him. “Your friend knows how to diagnose people and prescribe them medicine?”
“Ah, well, she’s fairly sure that my friend who’s sick has the same thing that she had last year and she went to the doctors and got the same prescription as that, so she figured that if we just got that it would be fine,” Jack lied, motioning towards the pill bottle once again. He hoped that it sounded believable and one thing was true in all of that: they both had allergies.
“And why didn’t you just take your sick friend in to see the doctor at the clinic?” the guy asked. “You shouldn’t assume when it comes to health.”
“He was too sick for us to get him to the clinic, so we figured that we would go for him,” Jack answered.
“And where are his parents in all of this?” the man asked, quirking an eyebrow at Jack. “Shouldn’t his parents be taking your friend to the clinic?”
“You see, when I said that he’s our friend, it’s true, but you see, he’s also my brother,” Jack said, getting the idea that the guy wouldn’t just let them go to get back to Daniel. He had no idea quite why they were being paid that much attention by the authorities - the stern-faced man seemed like a bit overkill for kids breaking into a clinic for the first time.
“Your brother? Why didn’t you say so earlier?” the man asked, sounding as though he were suspicious of Jack now.
“Because all of my friends seem like family to me after a while,” Jack answered. That was the truth, after all; SG1 was his family now. “So, you see, it’s my responsibility to get Daniel his medicine.”
“Daniel?” The man quirked his eyebrow once more and Jack wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse.
“My brother,” Jack replied, rolling his eyes. “His name is Daniel.”
“So how is it your responsibility to get Daniel, you said his name was? To get Daniel the medicine that he needs?” the man asked, going back to the parental issue once again.
“My parents work at odd hours, sir,” Jack lied. “It’s my job to take care of the boys while they are busy.”
“The boys?” The man seemed back to being obtuse. Of course the man was also fishing for more information; why, Jack didn’t know.
“The brunet with me is also my brother,” Jack revealed. He figured that they could explain away Daniel, Cam, and him as being related along with Janet and George being related. Sam and Jonas could go in either family, but Vala and Teal’c would be difficult to place, as their looks were so different. Maybe one of the families adopted children, as Jack wasn’t quite sure how the ‘half siblings’ excuse would work in this culture. That was more of a Daniel or Jonas thing to figure out.
“So you all decided that instead of telling your parents that your sibling was sick, you’d go out and fetch the medicine yourselves?” the man asked.
“That’s about the size of it,” Jack agreed. He shrugged, knowing that it was a weird cover story, but quite sure that he didn’t want to chance this alternate universe, alien world’s social services.
“So, where do you live?” the man asked.
“Oh, around here,” Jack answered. “I don’t suppose we could just pay a fine for breaking and entering and then be let go, can we?”
“What about the pills?” the man asked, picking the bottle up and rattling it.
“They’d come with us, of course,” Jack answered, crossing his arms.
“You wouldn’t be paying a fine for them?” the man asked. He still held the bottle up, although he had stopped shaking it.
“It’s a free clinic, right?” Jack asked. “They would have treated Daniel without any problems if we went about it the normal way and we already left money for the drugs, so we’re good there.”
“I’d rather have a doctor look over your brother and letting him prescribe the drugs, if you don’t mind,” the man said, curling his fingers around the bottle before putting it away in the vest that he wore.
“I trust in my friend,” Jack said, wishing that the guy would just give it up and let them go. “If she says that she knows what Daniel has and what can cure him, then she knows what Daniel has and what medicine he needs to take in order to get better.”
“Unfortunately, I do not agree with your observation and I’m going to have to insist that we take your brother to the doctor,” the man said and Jack wondered where the black ops mask went. “If needed, we can even bring a medic nin along to stabilize him until we get him to the hospital.”
“Our place is kind of far away; you don’t have to go to the trouble of fetching Daniel,” Jack said in one last ditch effort. “Just let us go and we’ll bring Daniel in ourselves.”
“How far away is kind of far away?” the man asked, not sounding intimidated by Jack’s statement.
“Out in the desert, a good day’s travel away,” Jack admitted, knowing that it was vague enough that no one could tell exactly where they were staying. Of course, they had already told Temari and her brothers where they lived, but Jack was fairly sure that they wouldn’t spill the information to the police or ninjas or whoever was interrogating them.
“We can do that, no problem,” the man said. He grinned at the disgruntled look on Jack’s face as he stood up. “I’ll go round up a few of the guys for the mission, so you should get ready, too.”
“I told you, we can take care of it by ourselves,” Jack tried once more, scowling at the man.
“Come on, kid, we’ll get you back to your friends for a few minutes. You might not be a threat, as far as I can tell, but that doesn’t mean that you can just wander around,” the man said, ignoring Jack’s protests.
Jack reluctantly got up from the table and followed the man out of the room. The man led him down the hall lined with metal doors and came to a stop in front of a plain, ordinary door with a window in it. Through it, Jack could see the rest of his group sitting around a table.
The man paused before opening the door and turned back to Jack. “By the way, my name’s Yukio Toshiro, what’s yours?”
“Jack,” Jack absently answered, still puzzling over the way the man’s name had switched order in his brain automatically. It was a good thing he didn’t plan on giving any last names; he wasn’t sure just how their names would come out with the slight stargate influence. Already he was fairly sure that they were attaching honorifics to the end of names, although it was something that half the time he wasn’t aware of doing because they just slipped in one ear and out the other.
“Right, in you go, Jack, and reassure your friends,” the man said as he opened the door. “Be ready to leave in about half an hour or so.”
Jack allowed himself to be ushered into the room, smiling at his group. Since Toshiro was still watching him, Jack wrapped an arm around Janet’s shoulders in a half hug.
“Well, kids,” he said when the door finally shut and the lock clicked, signifying that they were left alone, “the jig is up, or at least halfway up. Good news is that Daniel’s going to get the help he needs and I don’t think we’re in too much trouble about the B and E, but the bad news is that my interrogator wants to help us.”
“How bad is it?” Cam asked.
“He’s going to go fetch Daniel and probably the others; he wouldn’t let us diagnose Daniel and I couldn’t exactly tell him that we have our own trained doctor,” Jack said with a shrug.
“Yeah, that wouldn’t really work,” Cam agreed. He frowned as he sat back down in his seat. “So, what happens now?”
“Now I go with the man and pick up Daniel and the rest of the kids, I suppose,” Jack answered. “Unless you think we can all sneak out of here?”
“I believe that we are in one of their military bases, O’Neill,” Teal’c informed them.
“It would make sense, what with the interrogation room I woke up in,” Jack replied. “That reminds me, did they talk with anyone else?”
“No, it was just you, although they did keep an eye on us the whole time you were gone,” Cam answered.
“Lucky me,” Jack grumbled.
“So, how do you think they’re going to react when you lead them to the cavern?” Cam asked, fiddling with what looked to be a game piece that had been left on the table.
“I’ll tell them that we’ve only just moved here and that our parents are nomads, or maybe that we found the place and decided that it would be a cool hangout.” Jack shrugged. “I still haven’t figured out how many parents there are, though.”
“I don’t think that we should have parents at all, if we really are letting them onto our base - which I think we should,” Janet said, pinning Jack with a look. “I am sure in my diagnoses, but I would feel better if Daniel were at the proper facilities to handle an illness such as that. It is also obvious that they will not allow us to go on our own.”
“I tried so many times,” Jack groaned. He ran a hand down his face. “Okay, what do you suggest that I tell him, Doc?”
“Tell him that we’re orphans who live nearby this village and we decided to move here,” Janet said. “There’s no real way that we can explain away the absence of at least three parents. Even if we manage to fool them for the pickup, they will not allow us to leave without contacting our parents and we know of no one to pretend to be them.”
Cam nodded to himself. “We could tell them that we wanted to check out the village first before trying to get a place there and we managed to stumble upon the cavern at the right time. It’s all true in a way.”
“And we did not inform this man who interrogated you of this fact because we do not trust anyone at this point in time,” Teal’c added.
“Orphans, right place right time, don’t trust anyone; got it,” Jack muttered to himself.
The door opened up and Toshiro stepped into the room. “I’ve got a team together and we’re ready to go. Jack’s going to accompany us and show us where to go, but we’d like the rest of you to stay here for now.” Toshiro glanced around. “Someone will come by with some food in a bit, so feel free to pester him for whatever you need.”
“I’ll see you guys later,” Jack said, nodding to his team before following Toshiro out of the room. “So, we’re off to see the wizard?”
Toshiro blinked at him, not getting the reference, but motioned down the hall. “This way.”
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Chapter 10
Chapter Nine: Interrogation Tactics
When Jack woke up he was in an interrogation room, or at least what he assumed to be an interrogation room. It was small, bland, with only a table and chairs bolted to the floor and all of those elements suggested an interrogation room, but the thing that was the clincher was the large mirror stretching across the wall that Jack was facing. Yep, Jack was certain that this was an interrogation room that he was in.
“Well, crap,” he muttered. At least he wasn’t handcuffed or tied down to anything, although he wasn’t sure if he would be able to escape, either. Still, it was better than the places he usually ended up in - the places that he had thought that he would no longer end up in. The thing about being locked in an interrogation room was that he had no idea where the rest of his group was and then there was the fact that Daniel was still sick and half a day away.
Jack did not have to wait long until the door opened and a man entered the room. The man looked pretty nondescript, but he reminded Jack of all of the black ops soldiers than he had known. Not only in the way that he moved, but by the sculpted, black clothes that he wore and the poker face that he had on. The only thing out of place from the black ops look was the headband that the man wore with the metal plate that had some sort of symbol on it. It reminded Jack of the letter ‘i’ written in that strange bubble letter font.
“So, do you normally knock people out for no reason in the middle of the night?” Jack asked, leaning back in his chair and raising his eyebrows at the guy.
“You were witnessed breaking into the clinic,” the guy said, vaguely looking as though Jack should try to pull the other one.
“Breaking into the clinic?” Jack tried the clueless route.
“I wouldn’t try to pull one over on me, kid, because it’s not going to work,” the guy scoffed. “Right now you’re here for breaking and entering and also under suspicion of kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Jack blurted out. “Who?”
“The Kazekage’s children,” the guy answered, glaring at Jack.
Jack blinked to himself, wondering who on earth the Kazekage was. “Temari and her brothers?” Jack hazarded a guess.
“You want to tell me what you were doing breaking into the clinic with the Kazekage’s children?” the man asked in reply.
Jack shrugged. “We met them outside the clinic and they decided to tag along. If I had known that people would freak out, I would have sent them off to bed.” Jack smirked. “Unless you regularly knock people out when arresting them.”
“What were you doing breaking into the clinic?” the man asked.
“What were you doing spying on us?” Jack shot back.
“Not doing anything illegal; that’s what you were doing.” The man scowled at Jack. “Now, spill.”
“What do people normally do when they go to a clinic?” Jack replied.
“They wait until the building is opened and they make an appointment, just like everyone else,” the man answered. “Most importantly, they’re examined by a doctor and they don’t prescribe themselves.” The man dropped a bottle of pills onto the table. Jack vaguely recognized it as one of the bottles that Janet picked out from the clinic.
“Those aren’t for me,” Jack informed the man.
“Then who are they for?” the man asked, clearly not believing him.
“Look, we have a friend at home who’s sick,” Jack caved. He motioned towards the pills on the table. “Those are supposed to make him better.”
“On whose authority?” the man asked.
“My redheaded friend knows more than she looks like she does,” Jack answered, figuring that it was better than ‘my friend is really forty one years old and a trained medical professional.’ The truth didn’t really sound believable and he figured that he was in enough trouble already without the guy deciding that he was lying. And, on the other side, he didn’t want to chance the guy believing his story and insisting on an answer that Jack really didn’t want to give. So, he would go with a cover story - at least this time it wasn’t ‘deep space radar telemetry.’
The guy frowned at him. “Your friend knows how to diagnose people and prescribe them medicine?”
“Ah, well, she’s fairly sure that my friend who’s sick has the same thing that she had last year and she went to the doctors and got the same prescription as that, so she figured that if we just got that it would be fine,” Jack lied, motioning towards the pill bottle once again. He hoped that it sounded believable and one thing was true in all of that: they both had allergies.
“And why didn’t you just take your sick friend in to see the doctor at the clinic?” the guy asked. “You shouldn’t assume when it comes to health.”
“He was too sick for us to get him to the clinic, so we figured that we would go for him,” Jack answered.
“And where are his parents in all of this?” the man asked, quirking an eyebrow at Jack. “Shouldn’t his parents be taking your friend to the clinic?”
“You see, when I said that he’s our friend, it’s true, but you see, he’s also my brother,” Jack said, getting the idea that the guy wouldn’t just let them go to get back to Daniel. He had no idea quite why they were being paid that much attention by the authorities - the stern-faced man seemed like a bit overkill for kids breaking into a clinic for the first time.
“Your brother? Why didn’t you say so earlier?” the man asked, sounding as though he were suspicious of Jack now.
“Because all of my friends seem like family to me after a while,” Jack answered. That was the truth, after all; SG1 was his family now. “So, you see, it’s my responsibility to get Daniel his medicine.”
“Daniel?” The man quirked his eyebrow once more and Jack wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse.
“My brother,” Jack replied, rolling his eyes. “His name is Daniel.”
“So how is it your responsibility to get Daniel, you said his name was? To get Daniel the medicine that he needs?” the man asked, going back to the parental issue once again.
“My parents work at odd hours, sir,” Jack lied. “It’s my job to take care of the boys while they are busy.”
“The boys?” The man seemed back to being obtuse. Of course the man was also fishing for more information; why, Jack didn’t know.
“The brunet with me is also my brother,” Jack revealed. He figured that they could explain away Daniel, Cam, and him as being related along with Janet and George being related. Sam and Jonas could go in either family, but Vala and Teal’c would be difficult to place, as their looks were so different. Maybe one of the families adopted children, as Jack wasn’t quite sure how the ‘half siblings’ excuse would work in this culture. That was more of a Daniel or Jonas thing to figure out.
“So you all decided that instead of telling your parents that your sibling was sick, you’d go out and fetch the medicine yourselves?” the man asked.
“That’s about the size of it,” Jack agreed. He shrugged, knowing that it was a weird cover story, but quite sure that he didn’t want to chance this alternate universe, alien world’s social services.
“So, where do you live?” the man asked.
“Oh, around here,” Jack answered. “I don’t suppose we could just pay a fine for breaking and entering and then be let go, can we?”
“What about the pills?” the man asked, picking the bottle up and rattling it.
“They’d come with us, of course,” Jack answered, crossing his arms.
“You wouldn’t be paying a fine for them?” the man asked. He still held the bottle up, although he had stopped shaking it.
“It’s a free clinic, right?” Jack asked. “They would have treated Daniel without any problems if we went about it the normal way and we already left money for the drugs, so we’re good there.”
“I’d rather have a doctor look over your brother and letting him prescribe the drugs, if you don’t mind,” the man said, curling his fingers around the bottle before putting it away in the vest that he wore.
“I trust in my friend,” Jack said, wishing that the guy would just give it up and let them go. “If she says that she knows what Daniel has and what can cure him, then she knows what Daniel has and what medicine he needs to take in order to get better.”
“Unfortunately, I do not agree with your observation and I’m going to have to insist that we take your brother to the doctor,” the man said and Jack wondered where the black ops mask went. “If needed, we can even bring a medic nin along to stabilize him until we get him to the hospital.”
“Our place is kind of far away; you don’t have to go to the trouble of fetching Daniel,” Jack said in one last ditch effort. “Just let us go and we’ll bring Daniel in ourselves.”
“How far away is kind of far away?” the man asked, not sounding intimidated by Jack’s statement.
“Out in the desert, a good day’s travel away,” Jack admitted, knowing that it was vague enough that no one could tell exactly where they were staying. Of course, they had already told Temari and her brothers where they lived, but Jack was fairly sure that they wouldn’t spill the information to the police or ninjas or whoever was interrogating them.
“We can do that, no problem,” the man said. He grinned at the disgruntled look on Jack’s face as he stood up. “I’ll go round up a few of the guys for the mission, so you should get ready, too.”
“I told you, we can take care of it by ourselves,” Jack tried once more, scowling at the man.
“Come on, kid, we’ll get you back to your friends for a few minutes. You might not be a threat, as far as I can tell, but that doesn’t mean that you can just wander around,” the man said, ignoring Jack’s protests.
Jack reluctantly got up from the table and followed the man out of the room. The man led him down the hall lined with metal doors and came to a stop in front of a plain, ordinary door with a window in it. Through it, Jack could see the rest of his group sitting around a table.
The man paused before opening the door and turned back to Jack. “By the way, my name’s Yukio Toshiro, what’s yours?”
“Jack,” Jack absently answered, still puzzling over the way the man’s name had switched order in his brain automatically. It was a good thing he didn’t plan on giving any last names; he wasn’t sure just how their names would come out with the slight stargate influence. Already he was fairly sure that they were attaching honorifics to the end of names, although it was something that half the time he wasn’t aware of doing because they just slipped in one ear and out the other.
“Right, in you go, Jack, and reassure your friends,” the man said as he opened the door. “Be ready to leave in about half an hour or so.”
Jack allowed himself to be ushered into the room, smiling at his group. Since Toshiro was still watching him, Jack wrapped an arm around Janet’s shoulders in a half hug.
“Well, kids,” he said when the door finally shut and the lock clicked, signifying that they were left alone, “the jig is up, or at least halfway up. Good news is that Daniel’s going to get the help he needs and I don’t think we’re in too much trouble about the B and E, but the bad news is that my interrogator wants to help us.”
“How bad is it?” Cam asked.
“He’s going to go fetch Daniel and probably the others; he wouldn’t let us diagnose Daniel and I couldn’t exactly tell him that we have our own trained doctor,” Jack said with a shrug.
“Yeah, that wouldn’t really work,” Cam agreed. He frowned as he sat back down in his seat. “So, what happens now?”
“Now I go with the man and pick up Daniel and the rest of the kids, I suppose,” Jack answered. “Unless you think we can all sneak out of here?”
“I believe that we are in one of their military bases, O’Neill,” Teal’c informed them.
“It would make sense, what with the interrogation room I woke up in,” Jack replied. “That reminds me, did they talk with anyone else?”
“No, it was just you, although they did keep an eye on us the whole time you were gone,” Cam answered.
“Lucky me,” Jack grumbled.
“So, how do you think they’re going to react when you lead them to the cavern?” Cam asked, fiddling with what looked to be a game piece that had been left on the table.
“I’ll tell them that we’ve only just moved here and that our parents are nomads, or maybe that we found the place and decided that it would be a cool hangout.” Jack shrugged. “I still haven’t figured out how many parents there are, though.”
“I don’t think that we should have parents at all, if we really are letting them onto our base - which I think we should,” Janet said, pinning Jack with a look. “I am sure in my diagnoses, but I would feel better if Daniel were at the proper facilities to handle an illness such as that. It is also obvious that they will not allow us to go on our own.”
“I tried so many times,” Jack groaned. He ran a hand down his face. “Okay, what do you suggest that I tell him, Doc?”
“Tell him that we’re orphans who live nearby this village and we decided to move here,” Janet said. “There’s no real way that we can explain away the absence of at least three parents. Even if we manage to fool them for the pickup, they will not allow us to leave without contacting our parents and we know of no one to pretend to be them.”
Cam nodded to himself. “We could tell them that we wanted to check out the village first before trying to get a place there and we managed to stumble upon the cavern at the right time. It’s all true in a way.”
“And we did not inform this man who interrogated you of this fact because we do not trust anyone at this point in time,” Teal’c added.
“Orphans, right place right time, don’t trust anyone; got it,” Jack muttered to himself.
The door opened up and Toshiro stepped into the room. “I’ve got a team together and we’re ready to go. Jack’s going to accompany us and show us where to go, but we’d like the rest of you to stay here for now.” Toshiro glanced around. “Someone will come by with some food in a bit, so feel free to pester him for whatever you need.”
“I’ll see you guys later,” Jack said, nodding to his team before following Toshiro out of the room. “So, we’re off to see the wizard?”
Toshiro blinked at him, not getting the reference, but motioned down the hall. “This way.”
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Chapter 10