by Martha Wells
He hung upside down out of the ceiling for a moment, just glad to be able to take a full breath, checking the copper-colored floor for suspicious objects and substances. He had been hoping this corridor would be clear, that Beckett’s group had planned to retreat down it if the medlab was compromised. Not seeing anything indicative of traps, he unfolded himself out of the narrow panel and dropped to the floor. The door to the rear area of the medlab area was around the next corner, and it was sealed tight.
John listened at it for a moment and heard muffled voices. He pounded on the door and called, “Hey, can anybody hear me in there? It’s Sheppard.”
After a moment he heard, “Major Sheppard?” It was Beckett’s voice, incredulous and so relieved John could barely understand him through the slurring vowels. “Radek, get over here and open this thing, it’s Sheppard!”
“Wait, wait,” John said hastily. This could be awkward. “Guys, listen to me. When you open the door, I want you to remember that it’s me. Don’t freak out and most importantly, don’t shoot me. Okay?”
There was silence from the other side of the door. John could practically feel Zelenka and Beckett exchanging a look. Then Zelenka’s voice said, warily, “Okay.”
The door slid open, revealing one of the main medlab bays. It was as dimly lit as the rest of Atlantis, with storage cases and wire-framed supply racks standing against the soft copper and silver metallic walls. Then Beckett cautiously peered around one side of the door. He stared, blinked, and said, “Oh, dear.”
“What?” Zelenka peered around the other side of the door, holding a 9mm. His eyes widened, and he gasped, “Kurva drat!” He grabbed John by the front of his shirt and dragged him into the room.
John hit the wall console to seal the door again, and Zelenka stepped back, staring at him, gesturing helplessly. “What—What—?”
“What—?” Beckett echoed, then took John’s wrist, turning his hand over so the claws were visible. “Holy crap. What in the hell did they do to you, boy?”
Covering the door were Ramirez and Audley, members of Bates’ security detail, both carrying P-90s. Ramirez managed to keep his face blank, but Audley looked like he was having one of those Pegasus Galaxy moments where you had to keep doing your job but all you really wanted was a little time to freak out. John sympathized; he had been having one for the past day and a half. John said, “Dorane did this. It’s a genetic retrovirus mutation thing. Rodney thinks—”
“Rodney’s alive too?” Beckett demanded.
“Oh yeah, Rodney’s fine. Sort of. He—” In the center section of the medical area where the diagnostic tables and beds were, he caught sight of Dr. Biro and several of the other medical personnel, as well as Dr. Sharpe, Miko, and a dozen or so others from the science team. Everybody was staring at John in consternation. Then a familiar figure shouldered a way through the crowd and John forgot about anything else. “Bates, what the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, furious. “Who’s with Elizabeth?”
Bates had had his mouth open, probably to say something about how John should be held at gunpoint until they could find out why he looked like that, but John’s irate question derailed that completely. “I don’t know, Major,” he said, his jaw set. “When they took the ’gate room, I was down on this level and I got cut off.” He hadn’t been patrolling or getting ready to go off world, so the only weapon he had was his sidearm.
“Oh, that’s just fantastic!” John pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, trying for calm. “So she’s up there holding off a bunch of Koan and our guys with what, three techs and a laptop?”
Bates controlled a wince. “Dr. Simpson is with her—”
Simpson was another expert on Ancient technology, and she must be the one keeping the door sealed against Dorane. But that didn’t make John feel any better. “Oh good, Elizabeth is being defended by another one of the civilians we’re supposed to be protecting. Does something seem wrong with that picture, Bates? It’s children, scientists, and diplomats first, did you not get the memo on that?”
Zelenka gestured impatiently. “Shout at Bates later! Tell us what happened now! Where is Rodney?”
John took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. Coming unglued at Bates didn’t help, though it had made John feel better for about a minute. Bates’ dark face was suffused with anger, Ramirez looked guilty, and Audley looked relieved, but then John had probably seemed a lot more like his normal self yelling at Bates than he had when he had first come into the room. “Rodney’s with Dorane. The only way we could get back here from the repository was for me to pretend this retrovirus worked better on me than Dorane thought it would, that I wanted to help him take over the city.”
Zelenka put his pistol down on a shelf to rub his eyes under his glasses. His face set grimly, Beckett explained, “When the bastard first got here, he told us you were both gone, that you’d been taken by Wraith. We thought—Well, you know what we thought.”
Zelenka looked up, his eyes hard. “It was very affecting story, lots of detail. Rodney trapped by the Wraith and you going after him, only to be caught yourself.”
“Later, when everything went to hell, we figured he had killed you both,” Beckett added. “And just what is he up to? What has he done to Ford and Kavanagh and the others?”
John explained, “He used a drug, something that works on people like the ATA works on Ancient tech. Or at least that’s what he said; he lies a lot. Teyla said he was in her head, and she had to do what he told her, and we don’t think Kavanagh even knew he was infected until Dorane started giving him orders. It doesn’t work so well on people who have the Ancient gene or the ATA therapy—that’s why he killed Kolesnikova and Boerne.” John flexed the set of claws Beckett was still examining, adding grimly, “I got the special.”
Beckett swore. “I knew that damn gene would cause no end of trouble.”
His face drawn, Zelenka shook his head. “That is… interesting problem. Interesting in the ‘oh God’ way.” He gestured vaguely. “Does Rodney have little silver things too?”
“No, Rodney’s normal—well, he’s Rodney.”
Beckett shook his head, his incredulous expression turning thoughtful. He took John’s chin and turned his head so he could look at his ear. “What are these spines for? Antennae?”
John pulled away. “I have no idea, except it makes the Ancient technology seem a lot more interactive.” Deciding it would be quicker to demonstrate than to try to explain, he nodded to a set of utilitarian metal shelves, incongruous against the smooth copper Atlantean wall panel. “That box there, on the bottom. In it there’s five of those little portable medical scanners. No, wait, there’s six. One…has a cracked control crystal.” He had almost said “one says it has a cracked control crystal” but he didn’t want to look that deranged, at least not in front of Bates.
Beckett and Zelenka stared at him. Zelenka muttered, “God, this would happen in middle of emergency.”
“Oh yeah, it would have been so much fun if this happened without the invasion of the city and the whole helpless mind-controlled slaves bit.” John conquered his irritation and continued, “Look, you guys have to figure out a way to stop the mind-control, because I’m stumped.” He turned to Bates.
From what John could figure, they had one asset that Dorane wouldn’t know about. “He’s got a group of our people locked in that meeting room at the end of the south hall on the lower operations level. I need you to take Audley and Ramirez and get the Wraith stunners out of the armory, then take out the men guarding the door and get our people the hell out of there. I’ll show you where the floor access is so you can get out of the medlab corridor without alerting the Koan. After that you’re on your own; I have to go back to Dorane before he gets any more suspicious than he already is.” It was there that the plan got really vague again, but he wasn’t going to mention that aloud.
Bates nodded sharply, his expression of concentrated suspicion changing briefly to relief. The Wraith use
d the stunners to render their prey helpless for capture and feeding; with the four stunners the expedition had managed to acquire, Bates and the others could take out the controlled Marines without harming them, and it would be quicker and far more efficient than trying to use tasers. It would still be risky, as the men under Dorane’s control would be shooting to kill, but it was the best chance they had to get out of this without a bloodbath. Bates said, “Then we take back the ’gate room.”
“That’s right.” By that point Bates would have help from the personnel liberated from the Koan, and the ’gate room was a straight shot right up the tower. Cutting off Dorane’s access to the Stargate would probably make him freaky and desperate as well as incredibly dangerous, but this was the only way they could play it. “They’re holding Grodin and Laroque in there, and there might be some others, so don’t give them time to shoot anybody. Grodin was the only one I saw who hadn’t been given the control drug. Then come after Dorane. We should be at one of the naquadah generator stations—he’s having McKay take them out for transport back to his planet. Don’t waste any shots on Dorane, he’s wearing a personal shield.”
Bates’ expression took on a new level of grim. Ramirez asked quickly, “Sir? Personal shield?”
“That Ancient thing Dr. McKay was wearing the time I shot him and threw him off the control gallery,” John told him.
“Yes, sir.” Ramirez nodded his comprehension, then realized the implications. “Uh oh.”
“Yeah.” It had been funny when they were playing ‘Captain Invulnerable’ with McKay; now it was anything but. And if the Ancients were going to make those damn things, why so few? Why not one for everybody? Sometimes the Ancients were just annoying. John wasn’t thrilled with the people who hadn’t bothered to flush the plague-spreading nanites and the Darkness creature before leaving the city, either. “By the time you get there, I’ll think of a way to take care of Dorane.”
John could see Bates suppressing a comment on that piece of optimism. Instead he said, “What about Eliza—” He corrected himself stiffly. “Dr. Weir?”
John shook his head, though it ate at him to make this decision. “He can’t get into that room, so he can’t hold them hostage; we can get them out after we take out Dorane.”
John could tell Bates saw the sense in that, though he didn’t like it either. As Bates took Audley and Ramirez aside to work out a plan of attack for the level the prisoners were on, John turned to Beckett and Zelenka again. “Look, Dorane’s going to send the Koan in here, probably when he has Rodney take out the generator for this section of the city. You need to get everybody out, get them to the lower levels, split up and hide. It’s not Atlantis he’s really after. He wants us, to experiment on.”
Beckett grimaced. “I thought it might be something like that. We’ll pack the emergency supplies and go as soon as we can.”
“Oh, and he wants the memory core from that pillar thing—that’s why he let me come down here.” John asked Zelenka, “Do you have that?”
Zelenka nodded. “Yes, I took it out to work on further, and it came with me when we evacuated the labs. There’s information there he wants?”
“Yeah. I have no idea what, but—Can you make a copy of a part that’s really damaged, something he won’t be able to read? I just need something I can hand him, something that’ll seem convincing.”
Zelenka was already moving toward an array of laptops set up on the work tables at the back of the bay. “Yes, yes, we can do this.”
Beckett rubbed his forehead wearily. “This mind-control can’t be a completely organic process. If he really based this on the ATA gene, it just doesn’t work that way. There has to be a technological component somewhere.”
“I haven’t seen him use—” John frowned. He had seen Dorane with something, when he and Teyla had caught him with the Koan. “Oh, crap. I thought he was using a life sign detector. But that was when McKay was hiding in the area; if Dorane had had a detector, he would’ve been able to send the Koan right to him.” That was why Dorane had put the thing down and walked away from it so readily. If John had had the chance to follow through on his threat to shoot Dorane’s hand off with the device in it, this whole thing would have been over in that moment. There’s a lesson in that, he told himself grimly.
Zelenka had returned and was listening thoughtfully, tapping a memory stick against his chin. “We think life sign detector works by sensing a degree of electrical activity in nervous system—that is why it doesn’t show the presence of hibernating Wraith.” He lifted his brows. “If he has altered a unit so it also broadcasts to these infected individuals and can perhaps set it to inhibit any activity that is not directly provoked by some certain cue, such as his voice—But this is all hypothetical.”
“Could you jam the hypothetical signal from the hypothetical thing?” John asked, not hopefully.
Zelenka shook his head, grimacing. “I doubt it, certainly not in limited time before he decides to order our friends to kill us. We still have not isolated the exact element the Ancient technology uses to interact with the ATA gene, and that is happening all around us, all the time.” He handed the memory stick to John. “Here is partial copy of the damaged portion of the core. It’s nothing useful, but as you said, it may keep him busy for a few moments.”
“Right, thanks.” John pocketed the little device, still thinking about the mind control. “The control box isn’t going to be Ancient tech, it’s going to be something with Dorane’s version of the gene. If we’re lucky.”
Beckett frowned. “You can hear that also?”
“It’s what made the Koan crazy. That repository sounds like…I can’t describe what it sounds like.” The constant whisper of alien noise was getting pretty loud in here now, with all the Ancient medical equipment that Beckett had managed to activate stored in this area, the devices he had figured out well enough to use safely and those he hadn’t. “I should be able to tell if he has it on him or hidden somewhere else. Maybe Atlantis’ ATA just drowned out whatever noise it was making.”
Beckett took a sharp breath. “We have to get our hands on that device, because there’s no telling how long it would take to create a counteragent to the biological side.” He lifted his brows. “Unless you could get me blood samples from a variety of victims—”
“Blood samples. Right.” John nodded earnestly. “Want me to pick up anything else while I’m out? Some groceries, your dry cleaning—”
Beckett took his arm. “I can at least take a sample from you right now.”
“Look, I don’t have a lot of time—”
“If you’d be still for two seconds I’ll have it done,” Beckett told him briskly, steering him toward a chair. Dr. Biro already had a drawer open in the nearest storage cabinet, scrambling for a hypo and collection vials. “And if I could take a sample of one of those spines—”
“Uh, no.” John sat down reluctantly, leaning away from Beckett. “What if they’re attached to my brain or something?”
“Well, then we’d best find that out, shouldn’t we?”
John ended up successfully resisting having a spine ripped out of his skull, but Beckett stood over him with one of the Ancient medical scanning devices while Biro took the blood sample. It took her a couple of minutes to get it, since John’s veins apparently heard her coming and tried to hide. “You’re badly dehydrated, Major,” she told him, her expression severe.
“And you know, that’s really the least of my problems right now,” John said, and then had to convince her that he barely had time for the bottle of water she forced on him and that an IV was out of the question.
Beckett was still studying the Ancient diagnostic scanner, a faint professional frown creasing his brow. John started to ask something and saw Beckett’s face change, caught the unguarded moment when the scanner showed Beckett something he must have suspected but had been hoping not to see. Well, crap, John thought, cold settling in the pit of his stomach. The ATA was getting louder and more int
rusive; it wasn’t just his imagination, or that there was less ambient noise here to drown it out, or that there was so much active Ancient technology in the medlab. Something was changing in his body and brain chemistry again, and from Beckett’s expression, it wasn’t good.
Beckett cleared his throat; his professional mask was back in place, but the lines on his face were etched a little deeper. “Major Sheppard, I need to talk to you in private.”
“Carson, I don’t have time, and I don’t want to know,” John said. Dr. Biro had finished with the blood sample, and he pulled away from her automatic attempt to put a bandage over the puncture; without one it was just one more bloody scratch on his arm and he didn’t want anything to draw Dorane’s attention to it. Watching Beckett worriedly, Biro barely noticed. Though she hadn’t seen the scanner, she must have caught the same implication from Beckett’s expression. “Not unless it’s going to happen in the next five minutes.”
Beckett winced. He said, “I haven’t even looked at your blood sample yet. We don’t know—”
John avoided his eyes. Okay, that means I’ve got more than five minutes. He didn’t want sympathy right now. Actually he did want it, a lot of it, he just didn’t have time for it. And he wasn’t sure he wanted it from the two people who, in a best case scenario, would be doing his autopsy. He shoved to his feet, suppressing the urge to ask them not to put him in the same freezer as the parts that were left of Steve the Wraith. “I’ve got to get back up there. Make sure Zelenka keeps that memory core safe. It’s the only thing Dorane seems to want more than us.”
As the others scrambled to gather emergency gear, Beckett followed as John led Bates, Audley, and Ramirez to the floor access panel that would take them down to the section below where they could reach the armory. It would be easier and faster for John to go back that way instead of going up and out again.
Waiting impatiently for Audley to pry up the panel, John felt something change in the direction of the central stairwell. It was that same weird tickly feeling in the back of his brain that had warned him about the Koan in the forest. He could tell there were a lot of them, and he could tell they were close but not too close, somewhere towards the inner portion of this section. He said, “There’s some Koan nearby; they’re probably gathering at the stairwell access to the main medlab corridor. Dorane must be getting ready to cut the power to this section.” He looked up to find all of them staring at him a little warily, except for Beckett, who looked like he was making mental notes. John told him, “Remember, let them take the medlab, just get everybody out through here and further down into the city.”
