by Martha Wells
"Okay." John blinked, distracted, as the little device sang that it had lots of data but was ready for more. "Uh... What is it?"
"A download from Dorane's database. He thought he had it adequately protected, but let's say his system security skills don't match his Frankensteinian expertise in biochemistry. The Ancients must have been able to get this data too, so I don't know how useful it might be, but it's still worth saving." Rodney tucked it into one of the MALP's code-locked compartments. The metal muted the little device's song, and it settled into quiet. McKay dusted his hands off on his pants. "Now, this has got to look good. We need some stage dressing. I have to look like your prisoner." Covered with a sticky combination of sweat, dust, and sand, and turning red from incipient sunburn, McKay already looked like he had been dragged to the Stargate by the ankle. He patted his pockets and handed over the 9mm to John. "You should tie me up," he added, looking absently around. "Better use my belt. There's some cable in the MALP's compartment, but we'll need that to hang ourselves if this doesn't work."
John went to the MALP to start powering up the transmitter, making sure it was ready to send as soon as they got the last chevron locked. "Right. How about a chorus of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?"
"Maybe later."
Having McKay's hands awkwardly tied with the belt made pushing the inner ring more difficult, but the symbols for Atlantis' address each locked without hesitation when the ring slid into place. They hastily scrambled out of the way as the last chevron encoded.
The wormhole whooshed into existence with a blast of ozone and a bass fugue John could feel through his whole body as he bolted around to the MALP. The jumpers' instant response to him was like coming home, but he wasn't comfortable with this intimate a relationship with a Stargate, let alone random data pads and ZPMs. He reached for the transmitter and froze. He felt something building in the DHD's ruined base, heard a weird little scatter of dissonant notes. Then it cut off abruptly. He realized what it was and swore in frustration. "Rodney, I think the `gate just ate the ZPM."
Rodney stepped to the DHD's pit, staring down into it. He moaned a little, sounding as if he was deeply in pain. "I think the Ancients might have anticipated that Dorane might try to dial manually. Obviously, they wanted to keep that to a minimum, so they not only doctored the crystal, they booby-trapped the DHD to eat any directly connected power source."
"Yeah. I guess it didn't take him long to use up those two ZPMs after all." And that meant they only had this one chance to convince Dorane to let them in. "Here we go." He keyed on the transmitter. "Sheppard to Atlantis."
The radio crackled and static filled the little screen. The moment stretched and John had time to wonder what he would say if Peter Grodin answered as though everything was normal. The moment stretched longer, and every muscle in his body tensed as he felt the sudden conviction that no one was going to answer, that he was talking to a dead city, as dead as the ruins behind him. Then Dorane's voice said, "Now this is unexpected."
"Unexpected is right," John said, having no problem making his voice sound rough and on edge. His imagination presented him with a picture of Dorane standing at the `gate control console on the gallery, surrounded by dead operations staff. "The Koan didn't eat me, though not from lack of trying. How's that invasion of Atlantis going?"
"It surprises me that you were able to dial the Stargate." Standing next to John, Rodney mouthed the words no, really. "Why did you bother?"
"My guess is it's not going so well there. I figure you didn't realize how many changes we'd made, how many of the Ancient components had failed, how jury-rigged everything was." Dorane would have been expecting Atlantis as it was before the Ancients left, not consoles with laptops tied into their systems and naquadah power generators.
No answer. He wouldn't be talking at all if he wasn't at least curious, John reminded himself. He said, "I have something that could make the transition a little easier for you."
"And that would be?"
"McKay. The Koan didn't eat him either. He knows more about how our equipment meshes with the Ancients' than anybody else there." If he's got Zelenka under his control, this is so not going to work.
Another long silence, while John's nerves grated. He forced himself not to speak, to pretend he was the one holding all the cards. Then Dorane said, "Better than Kavanagh?"
Beside him Rodney rolled his eyes in disgust. John said, "Kavanagh's a specialist; McKay knows the whole city. He set up the new power grid, the new `gate protocols." McKay was motioning with his bound hands, encouraging John to continue. "Everything."
"And he will agree to help me, to buy your freedom from my old prison?"
"Well, he won't agree, but I'm sure you can convince him otherwise. He doesn't have a choice."
Dorane still didn't sound that interested. "You would turn against your own people to assist me?"
John took what he figured was their last chance. "Maybe you ought to turn on the visual and take a look."
McKay, now hovering behind John and hopping from foot to foot, apparently decided he should be unconscious, and threw himself down on the platform, sprawling half on his side, bound hands stuck out obviously in front of him. He raised inquiring brows at John, who nodded and gave him a thumb's up. McKay was right, it did look convincing. The video crackled into life, and McKay slumped over, eyes closed. The MALP's camera swiveled toward them, but John was more interested in the image fuzzily forming on the screen. It was the `gate control gallery, Dorane standing over the dialing console, frowning thoughtfully at something beyond the edge of the screen. The MALP's telemetry and video went through a laptop, and John wondered if Dorane realized the little thingy to the side was a camera, that the system had been set to send video at the same time it received it. As soon as we step through, I can get him from the 'gate platform. His chest tightened at the thought that this plan just might work. Knowing where Dorane was standing in the large `gate room was going to shave seconds off his time.
Someone else moved in the video's background, and John saw it was Peter Grodin. He was sitting down and someone was covering him with a P-90. Grodin craned his neck to see the laptop's screen, his expression confused and incredulous. Then Dorane said, "Take off the eye protection."
John gritted his teeth, feeling like somebody's science exhibit, and pulled off the glasses and the bandana. The light stung his eyes, and he shaded them with a hand, flexing his fingers to extend the claws.
Dorane said nothing. Afraid he was losing his audience, John added, "Yeah, it worked. You think my own people would take me back after this? I'm not human anymore! If they got their hands on me, I'd spend the rest of my life locked up in a lab, as somebody's pet experiment, cut to pieces while they took tissue samples and made things out of my blood!" He put the glasses back on, unable to stand the glare, and saw Peter looked shocked, utterly boggled, and a little offended, as if he couldn't believe John would really think that. John started playing to him, finding it easier than trying to convince Dorane. He twisted his face into his best impression of Jack Nicholson playing an ax murderer, and added on a note of rising hysteria, "And they never trusted me in the first place! I'm only the military commander because I shot Colonel Sumner! He never even wanted me on the expedition, I'm only here because I had the gene and O'Neill forced him to take me!" He paused for breath. His throat was dry and it made his voice so rough he barely recognized it.
Grodin's expression now clearly said, 'Fine, Sheppard's turned into an alien and gone barking, that's just lovely.'
Behind John, Rodney groaned, obviously wanting in on the drama. John pretended to kick him, his boot connecting with Rodney's ribs though not nearly as hard as it would look. He hissed a heartfelt, "Will you shut up!"
John saw Dorane turn his head, and heard him ask someone, "Who was this Sumner?"
A voice, so dull and lifeless that John couldn't recognize it, answered, "The military commander of the expedition."
John took a d
eep breath. Dorane had obviously been using his control drug. Dorane asked, "Did your friend Sheppard truly kill him?"
"That's what we were told. He said... it was because a Wraith was killing Sumner, he was dying."
Whoever it was was speaking literally, as if he was under hypnosis, but the effect of it was to make the incident sound less like a mercy killing and more like a murder. Feeling this just might work, John snarled, "Hey! Are you going to drop the force shield, or should I just kill McKay?" The Stargate's bass harmonic was turning impatient as it counted down its thirty-eight minute window. He shouted, "Come on, the Stargate's getting pissed offl"
Dorane looked into the video monitor for another long moment. Then he smiled. "I'll drop the shield. Come through."
John cut the transmission, made sure the light on the MALP's camera was out. "We're clear."
McKay shoved himself into a sitting position and glared at him. "Ow," he said pointedly.
"That didn't hurt." John gave him an arm up. "I could see Grodin in the monitor. He looked okay, and I think he bought the act."
"Who knew Peter was that big an idiot." McKay took a deep breath. "It occurs to me that if you don't take Dorane out in the first minute, I'm going to be tortured to death and you're going to be dissected, and everybody else will still die."
"Yeah, Plan B sucks, but considering that Plan C was hanging ourselves-" The Stargate informed John that the shield on the receiving gate was down and they were clear for entry, so go already. He picked up the 9mm and made sure it was ready, then grabbed McKay's arm. They stepped through the wormhole.
CHAPTER NINE
fter the heat of the plain, the cool air of Atlantis was a mild .shock. They walked into a `gate room that was lit only by low-level emergency lights and the wormhole's watery blue glow, the late afternoon sun muted by the colored window insets. The Stargate was playing a loud surrealist concert in John's head, and he hadn't stepped into a darkened `gate room since they had first found Atlantis resting on the bottom of its alien ocean, just before the city had come alive to welcome him and the others who had the Ancient gene. The large space would be oppressively dim to normal human eyes, but John could see and recognize the figures standing on the gallery level.
There were a dozen or more Koan up there, as well as Ford, Benson, Kinjo, Parker, and Yamato, all with P-90s, all of whom must be under Dorane's control. That really wasn't good. But Dorane still stood beside the dialing console, and he couldn't control anybody if he was dead. John pulled off the sunglasses, meaning to disguise the motion of raising the pistol; he stopped just in time.
Though he couldn't see it, there was a little harmonic of active Ancient technology, announcing its presence right in the center of Dorane's chest. Oh, crap, John thought, sick, his hand tightening on the pistol's grip. Apparently Plan B was worse than we thought. He kept the pistol at his side.
Managing to talk without moving his lips, Rodney said, "Why aren't you shooting him?"
Teeth gritted, John replied the same way. "Because he's wearing a personal shield."
"Oh, God," Rodney said aloud.
"Shut up," John snarled at him, making it loud enough to hear up in the gallery. All they had between them and being shot by their own people was convincing Dorane. And John had just recalled that McKay, like most people with minimal filtering between brain and mouth, was kind of a lousy liar. "Seriously," he added, hoping McKay got it. McKay looked righteously offended, so John could only hope he had.
John heard the Stargate make a low bass groan right before it shut down. The wormhole popped out of existence, plunging the `gate room into another level of shadow. In its absence John could hear whispers and echoes in the crystals and conduits, murmurs under the floor, in the walls, stretching up into the sealed jumper bay above the room. It didn't hurt, it wasn't intrusive, but it made his skin crawl like a constant low-level electric charge. In a way, it was a relief. If Atlantis' ATA had sounded anything like the repository's screaming and dissonance, John would have been out of his head before he got ten feet away from the Stargate. But still, he had the feeling this wasn't right. I really, really don't think the ATA gene is supposed to work this way.
Dorane was coming down the steps from the gallery, dressed now in a loose gray jacket and pants. It might just be John's altered eyesight, but he looked different. The flesh around his eyes was sunken and his cheeks were hollow, as if he had aged another decade in the past day. It might be some kind of delayed effect of the stasis container.
John could see Peter Grodin up at the dialing console, watching anxiously. It was Ford who was covering Grodin with a P-90, and that was just weird. Ford's face was blank, his eyes on Grodin. He hadn't looked down at the Stargate, at John and McKay standing on the embarkation floor. It suddenly occurred to John that they had been assuming the people who were infected with the mind control would get over it, either with help or on their own, and they had no guarantee of that. The empty expression on Ford's face made John wonder what it did to your mind, your brain, if there was permanent damage.
Dorane stopped at the base of the stairs, watching them with that thoughtful absence of emotion. Carson Beckett probably felt more in common with his lab mice than Dorane did with his experimental subjects; he certainly treated them better. "I'm surprised you trusted me to open the force shield," Dorane said. He made no signal, but several Koan followed him down from the gallery, moving fluidly in the half-light. Most of them were armed now with pistols or P-90s. John wondered what their learning curve was, how many of them had accidentally or on purpose shot each other so far.
"I didn't have to trust you," John told him, "The Stargate said it was open." Dorane must know John could hear the bastard version of the ATA gene that the repository was saturated with; John just wasn't sure if he knew about the side effect on the real ATA gene. And it was easier to sound crazy if he could just stick with the truth and not have to make things up.
Dorane's gaze flicked to the Stargate, but he didn't argue. He said, "Then demonstrate trust by giving up your weapon."
John could see from here that the personal shield, a small crystal device that rested on the chest, was concealed by a fold of Dorane's jacket. If John hadn't had the new sensitivity to the Ancient technology, he wouldn't have known it was there and would have blown what little cover they had. So giving inc a clear shot at him was a test. Maybe Dorane really did need them here for some reason, which seemed to indicate they might survive longer than the five minutes that was John's original estimate. He grabbed McKay's arm, dragging him forward, while McKay helped by saying, "Ow," a lot and trying to look more beat up than he actually was.
The Koan shifted forward, blocking the way, their dark eyes alert and steady. They looked far less twitchy, and somehow even more dangerous here than they had in the tunnels under the repository. John would have thought being removed from the place might have made them less susceptible to Dorane's control, but it just seemed to have solidified it.
John said, "Hi, guys. Miss me?" He ejected the clip and laid both it and the 9mm on the floor. It wasn't like the gun was going to do them any good anyway. The shield made Dorane invulnerable, creating an impervious body-hugging force field. He must have brought it with him; they had only found one in Atlantis, which had initialized to McKay so no one else could use it. Then the Darkness creature had sucked the energy out of it when McKay was trying to get it out through the `gate, and the shield had never worked since.
Dorane's expression was impenetrable. "Search them."
John submitted to being awkwardly patted down by the Koan, though the one doing him growled the entire time, making it clear it would much rather be disemboweling him. When they stepped back, empty-handed, Dorane said, "Very good," and didn't order anybody to shoot. He turned away, starting back up the steps to the control gallery. The Koan gestured with their weapons and John and McKay followed.
Seeing Dorane in control of their `gate room was painful in a way John hadn't expected. He ha
d never been part of the SGC; this was a Pegasus Galaxy thing, where access to a Stargate was to be protected at all cost, at any cost. Wraith might come through the `gates, but mostly they came from the air, and controlling your `gate meant survival.
McKay asked tightly, "What did you do with the rest of the people who were stationed in this area?"
It was the question John had been trying to think of a way to ask without wrecking his act. Dorane glanced back with mild interest. "They are being held in a secure room on the level below. Your leader Weir was very sympathetic to my people's plight, and obligingly sent two gateships back for them. Teyla and Kinjo accompanied them, and by the time they landed to pick up the Koan, the majority of each crew, besides the pilots, of course, were mine."
The pilots would have had the Ancient gene or the ATA therapy. John hoped they were both still alive. "And so you're moving in permanently?" he asked. He threw a look at Ford where he stood like a statue on the gallery, guarding Grodin.
Dorane laughed. "Of course not. Without full power, this city is ridiculously vulnerable to the Wraith. It's fit only for scavengers, now."
"Tell us something we don't know," John said, giving Rodney, whose mouth was open, a chance to think twice and shut it.
Dorane reached the gallery and stopped to look directly at McKay. Private Benson came to stand at his side, his expression dull-eyed and blank. Dorane said, "Some of your people have managed to fortify one of the levels lower down in this section. The doors are sealed, the transporters refuse access, and I can't convince the city systems to give me control."