Chapter Text
Rigar grabbed Daniel’s hair and yanked his head around. “What is that thing?” he demanded, pointing at the DHD. All Daniel could think was that it was their salvation if they could just get back to it. “What is it?” Rigar growled again, his face coming uncomfortably close to Daniel’s.
Looking into the eyes of his tormentor, Daniel tried to figure out if it would be better to tell the bastard what he wanted to know, or if it would be disastrous. If Rigar ordered it destroyed, that would end what hope they had of getting home anytime soon. He decided to continue the policy of limited honesty. “It controls the gate,” he said.
“There is no gate!” Rigar declared, placing equal stress on each of the words. “That is a lie, an Optrican fabrication.”
“I am not Optrican,” Daniel said, feeling like a broken record. “I’m an explorer from another world. We came here to learn more about your people and your world.”
Fortunately Rigar seemed to be the type of man who didn’t destroy things until he was certain they had no more use. He turned to the soldiers who had dragged Daniel out of the tent and said, “Take him into the interrogation tent.”
They hustled him inside, paying very little attention to whether or not he kept his footing at all. Rigar followed them in and said, “Don’t put him in the cage just yet.” They left him standing in the middle of the space, a few feet from the cage, and positioned themselves a few feet beyond the cage.
Daniel turned around to find their captor looming over him. He swallowed. He had to be careful. Sam and Jack were in the other tent, still caged, and Teal’c was out in the field, the only free agent they had at the moment. Hammond wouldn’t be expecting to hear from them for another thirty minutes to an hour. He wasn’t sure anymore, having lost track of time’s passage.
Rigar suddenly spoke, recapturing Daniel’s attention. “I can see why they selected you as their spokesperson,” the man said, gazing down at him. Daniel did his best to keep his expression neutral. “You’re very facile with words.” He glanced in the direction of the other tent. “The woman has learned her part almost too well, babbling off nonsensical science at a mile a minute.” Sam would love that, Daniel thought. “The other man doesn’t even try. You, on the other hand, speak very well, very persuasively. You have an earnest quality to you . . .” He paused, and Daniel wondered what he was supposed to say to that. “It might even have worked, for a time, had not Mallin’s good sense brought her to us.” Daniel looked down, but Rigar’s hand whipped out with his weapon, delivering a stinging shock to his arm. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
Daniel looked up, and he knew that the disgust he felt had to be nakedly visible in his expression. It wasn’t something he wanted to show Rigar, but he couldn’t control his face anymore. He was tired, and he hurt, and he was angrier than he’d been for a while. Those torture cages were no cobbled together affair. They had to carry the wretched things around with them. Setting them up had been the work of minutes, and what that implied made Daniel’s blood run cold.
Smiling malevolently, Rigar continued as if there had been no interruption. “It’s your appearance as well,” he said. “Women would find you appealing, and men would find you nonthreatening.” Daniel swallowed. How long did he have to listen to this man’s bile? “Tell me about him,” Rigar said smoothly, as if continuing the earlier train. “Your friend in the woods.”
“I don’t have any friend in --” Daniel started, but, not unexpectedly, Rigar shocked him again. So many shocks in such a short time were having a bad effect on Daniel’s coordination. He went down to one knee, and Rigar went around behind him, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and hauling him back to his feet. Then he yanked down on the jacket, dragging it off Daniel’s shoulders and halfway down his arms.
He turned to the guards and, stepping back from Daniel, said, “Strip him.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, Daniel tried to fight back, but there were two of them, and his coordination was shot to hell. Using them as restraints against him, as weapons almost, they removed his jacket and his shirt, tossing them aside. Then one of them held his arms behind him while the other removed his boots, socks, pants and boxers. That left him naked as the day he was born.
Rigar nodded and the one restraining him moved away. Daniel stood still, his chin raised slightly, refusing absolutely to give in to the humiliation he felt. He had no doubt that Rigar could see it in every furious line of his body, however. “Now, tell me about your man in the woods.”
“There are only the three of us,” Daniel replied as calmly as he could.
“What sort of weapon created the wound on my dead soldier?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I don’t know how he died.” That response was rewarded with a prod in his ribs from the shock stick. It was bad enough through a couple of layers of fabric. Pressed directly to bare skin it was agonizing. Daniel clenched his teeth against the pain.
“What is that device in the ground?” Rigar demanded.
“I already told you. It controls the gate.”
“There is no gate. That is Optrican fallacy. How long have you been planning this conspiracy? That device was deeply buried in the ground.”
“We are not Optricans,” Daniel said. “I don’t know what you’re --” The shock stick hit him in the belly, cutting off his words. He kept his feet, but barely.
“Was Nyan in on it from the start, or did he and Mallin surprise you before you were ready?”
It was an unanswerable question. “We are not Optrican spies,” Daniel growled. “We are peaceful explorers from another planet --” This time, Rigar shoved the shock stick into his groin and activated it. This sent Daniel spiraling into blackness.
When he came to, he was aware of immense pain in his groin and the feel of the canvas floor of the tent. He must have made some sign that he was conscious, for he felt movement and heard Rigar’s voice speaking very close to his ear.
“Tell me what I want to know and I will stop hurting you,” he said. Daniel clenched his teeth and refused to speak. The man stood up and gave him a poke with the shock stick in his back. Daniel arched his spine at the sudden burst of agony but let out no more than the merest grunt of pain.
He didn’t look up or hear an order, but Rigar must have made some gesture, for the two guards came forward and pulled him back to his feet again, leaving him standing there, naked and trembling with reaction to repeated electrical shocks. He raised his chin, glaring at the bastard who was holding them, his fists clenched at his sides. There was no way in hell he would give Teal’c up to this monster. Not only was he a friend, not only was he the only chance any of them had of getting out of this mess, but what Rigar would do with a genuine alien Daniel didn’t even want to know.
Rigar grabbed him by the arm and yanked him over to the table where all their gear was spread out. Pulling something out of his uniform, he bound Daniel’s wrists together again, as if all too aware that something on that table could be an unrecognized weapon. He picked up one of their GDOs and held it up. “What is this?” he asked.
Not for the first time, Daniel wished he could come up with spur of the moment snappy insolence the way Jack could. “We call them Garage Door Openers,” he said. “They help us get home safely.” Let the bastard puzzle that out. Glaring at him suspiciously, Rigar put the GDO down again. He repeated the question with their radios, Daniel’s camera, one of the books Daniel had brought with him, then he came to something Daniel definitely didn’t want to answer about.
He picked up one of the zat guns. “What’s this?” he asked.
“A zatnicatel,” Daniel said with perfect truth. It was unlikely in the extreme that Rigar spoke Goa’uld.
“What does it do?”
“It’s a zatnicatel,” he said again, as if that explained everything. Rigar narrowed his eyes and pressed the button on the weapon’s side. It popped open with a little whirring sound, and Rigar seemed to make a leap of logic. Unfortunately, it was an accurate leap.
“It’s a weapon,” he said. “What does it do?”
Daniel looked away, clenching his teeth. Rigar deactivated the zat and put it down again, then walked around behind him. Automatically, Daniel started to turn to keep his face towards his tormentor, but Rigar shoved him with the shock stick between his shoulder blades, both shocking and pushing at once. Daniel jerked forward, away from the offending object, and overbalanced. He wrenched his arms painfully trying to use them to compensate for his shift in position, and, lacking that aid, he landed face first amid the ordnance on the table.
Instead of yanking him back upright, Rigar pressed the inactive shock stick against Daniel’s back, shoving him harder against the table. “Your friend in the woods will not remain hidden forever. When we find him, I will torture him to death in front of you if you do not tell me his name, what he looks like, and how he killed my man.”
“There are only three of us,” Daniel said, his voice distorted by the awkward position. Rigar activated the shock stick again, and Daniel spasmed under the combined pressure and electrical impulse. He was breathing very heavily when Rigar set the stick aside. He started to try and heave himself back upright when the pressure was removed, but Rigar shoved him down, this time with his hands pushing against Daniel’s hips.
His face smashed against the table, miscellaneous bits of weaponry and other equipment pressing into various parts of his anatomy, Daniel struggled not to panic. He felt very trapped, very powerless. Jack and Sam were in the next tent, but they might as well have been miles away. Then he realized that Rigar could be doing this to either one of them and felt his insides contract. “You will tell me what I want to know, Optrican, sooner or later.”
“I am not Optrican,” Daniel growled. Rigar shoved his right leg forward, between Daniel’s, then shoved sideways, yanking Daniel’s right leg to the side.
“Confess, and all of this will stop,” Rigar said. “I will stop hurting you, you’ll be turned over to the government to be dealt with as the spies you are.”
“We are not Optrican spies, damn you!” Daniel growled. “We are peaceful explorers from another planet.”
Rigar put more pressure on him, shoving harder against his rear end. “The truth would serve you better, Optrican.”
Daniel snapped. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the --” He broke off abruptly as Rigar forced his legs apart even more harshly, causing him to fall flat on the table, slamming his already mistreated groin into the corner of the surface. Daniel let out a cry of pain that escalated into a shriek when he felt something penetrate his anus. “Son of a bitch!” he growled.
“How did that man die?” demanded Rigar, shoving his thumb deeper into Daniel’s body. Pain and the violation combined threatened to strangle Daniel’s voice. He could not believe this was happening. Gasping in shock and horror, he stared with wide eyes at the object in front of him, a plastic holster for one of their guns, as he felt the thumb worm around inside him. With the other hand, Rigar seized up the shock stick again and tapped Daniel on the back with it, causing him to arch again, then thump back to the table. He saw the holster do a little hop as his face hit the surface. The questioning was relentless. “How did he die?”
“I don’t know!” Daniel cried. He tried to distance himself from the persistent hurting and probing of Rigar’s thumb, but that proved impossible when the bastard shifted the angle of his thumb sharply, creating fresh pain. Daniel cut off the anguished shout before it got past his lips.
“What was your plan to infiltrate Bedrosia?” the man demanded, shifting angles again, causing Daniel to grit his teeth. Tears of pain and humiliation came to his eyes, and though he fought them hard, he could not stop them.
“We are not Optrican spies,” he ground out. Rigar yanked his thumb out, maintaining the sharp angle, and Daniel gasped. Then he shoved two fingers in, spreading the orifice wider than it was meant to go. Daniel let out an involuntary groan of agony, and he wanted to kick out at the bastard, but he had no leverage.
“When were you going to go public with these lies, Optrican?” Rigar demanded, scissoring his fingers and increasing Daniel’s agony yet again. He was uncomfortably aware of the guards in the room with them, felt exposed and vulnerable.
Fury lent his voice strength. “We are not Optrican spies, and no amount of torture is going to change that fact!”
Rigar jerked his fingers, still spread wide, out of Daniel’s anus and stepped back. Stunned, breathing hard from the effort to control his reactions, Daniel wasn’t sure what to expect, but he struggled to get his feet back under him again. A moment later, he felt hands seizing his arms and he was pulled back upright and wheeled around to face Rigar, who was snapping off a pair of what looked to be rubber gloves. Daniel lifted his chin, unable to control the hatred and helpless rage that had to be radiating from him at this point.
“If you don’t tell me the truth, Optrican, I will test that weapon on your friends,” he said, his eyes narrowed with anger and flicking towards the zat gun.
“I am telling you the truth,” Daniel spat. One of the guards shoved his shock stick between Daniel’s legs and the pain sent him reeling to the ground again, not quite unconscious.
“Get him dressed again and in the cage, then set up two more in here. I’ll be back.”
Daniel could hear the uneven steps of the man leaving, and the sound of the tent’s door opening and closing as the guards closed on him, unbinding his arms. They threw his clothes at him and let him fumble himself into them, limbs shaking with pain, exhaustion and humiliation. Then they shoved him back into the cage and began setting up the other two.
If Teal’c didn’t show up soon, they were in real trouble.