"I can't believe you're holding me hostage," snapped Rodney McKay.
"Think of it this way." Parker leaned back in her chair and propped her long, slender legs up on her desk. "You're not so much being held hostage as being brought in as an independent contractor."
Rodney stood, ignoring the piles of equipment he'd been fidgeting with, turned to face Parker, and snapped at her. "An independent contractor is someone whom you pay. Which you are not doing. You kidnapped me, brought me here, and now you expect me to construct some kind of advanced teleportation device for you. Which, even if it were possible, I wouldn't do." Then he noticed her legs and gulped audibly.
Parker smiled at him, her teeth gleaming in the half-dark room. "Our sources tell us you're intimately familiar with that kind of technology, Dr. McKay," she said, drawing out the word 'intimately.' Keeping him off-balance with a mixture of sex and wit while she challenged his intellect was key to learning anything from this man. Jarod wasn't the only one who could read people. "We wouldn't have brought you here if we didn't need the kind of help only you could provide."
"Yes, well," said Rodney, clearing his throat. "That doesn't change the essential facts of the matter." He glanced down at the parts. "The fact of the matter is, you kidnapped me and you've given me piles of nonessential, confusing--" Ancient technology that you people shouldn't have been able to get ahold of in a million years. "--junk and expect me to assemble it into a machine that we're not technologically capable of creating!"
"Dr. McKay," said Parker, swinging her legs back down and standing abruptly. She stalked over to him, heels clicking against the floor, hips swaying, and leaned in very, very close. "You are going to create a teleporter for us, and you are going to do it now," she hissed. "And then, when you're done, if you ask very nicely, we might send you back to that top-secret project you've been working on without a pound of flesh missing."
Rodney studied her. She reminded him of Elizabeth, only an Elizabeth somehow gone horribly wrong. Because Elizabeth was at least nice, when she was telling him what to do, which he only let her get away with because she was in charge of the whole expedition. And she was trying to play on his hormones--which were, admittedly, considerably excited by that, given that he'd been too busy lately to pursue a relationship with anyone--but she wasn't even blonde.
Not that it mattered very much right now. He already knew Elizabeth and John would send someone out looking for him, and he very much doubted that these people knew how to block Hermiod's scans, and once they figured out where he'd been taken, they would simply take the Prometheus and beam him out of here. Hopefully along with all this fascinating Ancient technology.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he snapped. "Your people are obviously playing you for a fool. I'm an astrophysicist, I've been contracted to work in Antarctica with the government, and whoever you are, you're--"
White light enveloped Rodney, and he reached out to grab Parker's wrist.
"--not getting away with this," he finished triumphantly from the bridge of the Prometheus.
Parker glanced around at the good half-dozen military men with their weapons aimed at her and didn't bother going for her gun. Then she got a look at Hermiod. "Raines was right, damn it all to hell," she said, groaning and dropping her face into the open palm of her hand. "There are little gray men out there."
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