by Martha Wells
John could hear more Koan up on the gallery, making those soft noises at each other that sounded like distorted speech. This place looked an awful lot like an operating theater or a room for experiments that you needed to watch but that you definitely didn’t want to get too close to. Neither of which was a pleasant thought.
He took a deep breath. Okay, think. Get yourself out of this. The manacle on his right arm was just a little loose. John worked his wrist, gritting his teeth, through sharp pain to dull pain to numbness, but he couldn’t drag his hand out of the manacle. Hold it, now how do magicians do this? Oh, that’s right, they swallow the keys first. Or dislocate a joint or something. But there was another way. The manacle hadn’t been machined very well, and one edge was a little sharper than the other. John ground his inner wrist against it, grimacing. It was a little like trying to cut yourself with a spork; a sharper edge would have hurt a lot less. But he only needed a little blood, just enough to lubricate his skin.
Finally he felt moisture on his wrist. He worked his hand around, getting slick wetness everywhere, then pulled with all his strength.
It hurt like crazy, but his hand popped out. “Ow. Ow, ow, ow,” John hissed, fumbling at the other manacle. His fingers were almost too numb to be able to tell, but he couldn’t find a release or even a lock. “Son of a bitch,” he said wearily, letting his abused arm fall limp. The catch or whatever it was must be lower down to prevent just this kind of escape attempt. He was going to have to do the same damn thing to the other wrist, only that manacle didn’t seem to have that extra few millimeters of room. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about the ankle chains if he still couldn’t reach any kind of a release mechanism. But if he could get his boots off maybe—
A scraping sound made him look up toward the gallery. A Koan had opened the gate and stood on the narrow stairway. It had a bloodstained rag wrapped around one leg. John rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Oh, I bet you’re the one I shot.” It had to be the one he had wounded in the passage, when they had found the sensor-jammer. “That’s what this situation needed,” he said sourly.
It started down the narrow stair, limping badly on its wounded leg. It was growling softly to itself, sounding almost amused.
It reached the floor and moved closer to him, sniffing. John said reasonably, “Come on, I know there’s a person in there somewhere. You don’t want to hurt me. Didn’t you hear what Dorane made Teyla do? I’m, you know, one of you now. Or whatever. This isn’t working, is it?” He kept both arms limp; he wasn’t sure it realized he had a hand free.
It circled the slab, passing close enough that he could see its eyes. They were yellow, the pupils dark ovals, and there was no awareness there. They were empty, like looking into the eyes of a shark, and that made its human features just that much more terrible. “I have a bad feeling there’s nobody home in there.” John felt a sick fear settle into his stomach. He gave you something that’s going to make you end up like that. He shoved the thought aside. Maybe it had been a lie, just to torture Teyla and scare the hell out of him. Well, it worked.
The Koan reached the end of the slab and stood thoughtfully, long enough for John to wonder again if maybe he could talk to it. Then it lifted a hand and stabbed its claws into his thigh.
John swore through gritted teeth, reflexively jerking away from the pain and feeling the manacles grind into his flesh. “Oh, yeah, I get it,” he said with a gasp, “I hurt you, you hurt me. We’re even now. All’s forgiven. Bye.”
It pulled its claws free, and he felt blood well up. It moved up the slab to lean over him, one hand resting on his chest, the claws just snagging in the material of his shirt. John held his breath, waited until it started to press down. Then with his free hand, he punched it in the larynx.
It staggered back, clutching at its throat and making gagging noises. But John could tell he hadn’t had the leverage to make it a killing blow. “Oh, crap,” he muttered. The creature eyed him with pure hate, gasping for a breath. Yeah, I’ve done it now, all right.
The lights went out abruptly. Something clanged as it hit the metal floor of the gallery, and a brilliant white light exploded in the darkness. The Koan up there yelled in pain, and John winced away. A quick scatter of shots echoed off the stone while a flashlight beam waved wildly around. John twisted frantically, trying to see who it was. He could tell from the sound that whoever was shooting had a 9mm but—
His Koan buddy snarled angrily and flung itself toward the stairs. The flashlight beam swung toward it, catching it midway up. Another shot from the 9mm dropped it. It sprawled across the steps, twitched a few times, then went still. “Major Sheppard?” It was McKay’s voice, coming from the gallery. “Are you all right?”
“Rodney!” John’s throat went tight with relief. He should have known it; McKay was too smart to get killed. “Yeah, I’m fine, get down here!”
“Good, I didn’t know—” More thumping and clanging and flashlight waving, as McKay must have been wrestling the gate open. He sounded harried and breathless and almost as relieved as John. “—how I was going—” There was a gasp as the gate gave way and muted thuds as he half-climbed, half-fell down the narrow steps “—drag you out of here if you weren’t conscious.” Then McKay was standing over him, waving a 9mm and a pocket flashlight. He shoved the pistol back into its holster and pointed the light around, demanding, “Are you hurt?”
“Rodney, Rodney, not in the eyes,” John said urgently, twisting his face away. His eyes still felt sunburned from the explosion of light up on the gallery.
“Sorry.” McKay juggled the flashlight and something that had the low power hum of a laser cutting tool. The light flicked around to the manacles. “You’re bleeding—Did that thing bite you?” he asked worriedly. “God knows what kind of diseases—”
“It clawed my leg a little, and that manacle was loose and I was using the blood to work my wrist—” With McKay, alive and well, standing over him apparently loaded down with weapons and tools, it now sounded kind of crazy. “I was trying to escape, okay? What did you do up there, what was that explosion?”
“Potassium perchlorate and aluminum powder. I found a biochem lab that still had some viable materials.” McKay put the flashlight in John’s free hand, positioning it so the beam would illuminate the other wrist manacle. “Hold that still. And don’t move.”
McKay cut through the manacle, and John sat up, then nearly reeled over as a wave of dizziness hit. He felt flushed and hot and had to take a deep breath to keep from throwing up.
McKay was too busy working on the ankle restraints to notice; he snapped, “Will you hold that light still? I don’t think either of us wants any accidental amputations here.”
John pushed himself up again, taking deep breaths to clear his head and trying to steady the light. It might be blood loss. He could see now that his wrist was bleeding a lot more than he had thought, to the extent where trying to free the other arm the same way might have been a big mistake. His last mistake. While McKay cut through the ankle chains John held the flashlight in his mouth so he could dig out a bandana to wrap around his wrist. His pockets were empty of anything else that might be useful. He said around the flashlight, “He took the others to the surface, to the jumper. They’re going to Atlantis. We need to get up there.”
“Yes, I thought it must be something like that.” Sounding exasperated, McKay asked, “What the hell was up with Kavanagh? He attacked Ford.”
John tied off the bandana and took the light out of his mouth, holding it out for McKay. His eyes still hurt, but considering the massive headache and the puncture wounds, it was the least of his problems. “Teyla said Dorane got Kavanagh with this mind-control drug. It works like the Ancient Technology Activation, but on people. Once you’ve been dosed with it, apparently you just do what he wants you to do, you can’t stop yourself. He got Kavanagh with it when we first arrived, and Kavanagh passed it on to Teyla. The drug doesn’t work too well if you have the Ancient gene o
r the therapy, so he couldn’t get Kolesnikova or you or me. It didn’t take right away on Teyla, probably because she’s Athosian.”
McKay’s voice was grim. “The sick bastard killed Irina, did you know? I found her body.”
“Yeah, Teyla told me.” John took a sharp breath. One more civilian he hadn’t been able to protect. She shouldn’t have been here, we never should have brought so many civilians, she should have been home in a lab discovering stuff. “She had the ATA therapy, that was why he killed her.”
McKay looked up, frowning. “I’ve got the ATA therapy.”
“He told me you were dead too.”
“Well, despite what you and Ford think, I’m a hell of a lot faster than Kavanagh at everything, including running in panic down dark corridors.” McKay got the last chain cut away, and John hopped off the slab. He started to tell McKay to give him the pistol, but the dizziness hit again. John dropped to his knees, just barely able to keep himself from doing a face-plant on the stone floor.
“What’s wrong?” McKay asked urgently, leaning over him, fumbling with the flashlight. “Did he shoot you? You should have mentioned it earlier. Rugged stoicism has its place in these situations, but—”
“Can you tell if I feel hot, if I have a fever?” John asked him. He felt like heat was radiating off him in waves. This wasn’t from blood loss, and it wasn’t from getting hit on the head.
McKay sat on his heels and put the back of his hand to John’s forehead. “Yes, you’re burning up. Are you sick? How did you get sick? This is lousy timing—”
“Rodney, just shut up and listen.” John bit his lip. He had to admit it to himself; Dorane hadn’t been lying about the injection. Whatever Teyla had given him, it was starting to take affect. Concussions didn’t give you fevers. But saying it aloud was like giving in to it. “Dorane made Teyla give me a drug.”
“What? Like the mind-control thing, whatever, that he gave the others—”
“No, no. She gave me what he’s been giving the Koan. The drug he developed when he was experimenting on the humans who used to live here. It’s like Beckett’s retrovirus. It was because I had the Ancient gene, that I was born with it instead of needing the therapy like you guys. It’s like he thought I was one of them, or something. And he really hates them.”
In the glow of the flashlight, John saw McKay’s mouth twist down. For a long moment McKay didn’t say anything, then he let his breath out. “Right. I’ll have to get into his database—hopefully he used the Ancient nomenclature—chances are he didn’t take the time to destroy it. Or he couldn’t bear to destroy it. Megalomaniacs are often unable to take those kinds of preventative measures.” He pushed to his feet. “But how am I going to get you up those stairs? Maybe a safety rope—”
John glared up at him, frustrated. “Rodney, you don’t understand—”
“Of course I understand!” Trying to shout quietly, McKay’s voice cracked. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? A nutjob looking for revenge on people who have been dead ten thousand years tried to turn you into a monster by giving you a drug that’s going to wreck havoc with every cell in your body! And will you shut up while I’m trying to think? We need a plan here!”
“Okay, okay! Just calm down!” About the last thing John needed right now was to have to talk McKay down from a panic attack. But part of him knew that if McKay, of all people, had gone all sympathetic, it would have been that much worse. John would much rather have him acting normal, which meant yelling like a crazy man and making it all about him. “But you have to stop him from getting to Atlantis. Or warn them. When he dials the Stargate, you can use that communications suite to—”
“I tried that first, as soon as I could get back into that area. I thought I could call Boerne and the others for help,” McKay said flatly. “That console hasn’t worked in hundreds of years. The key control crystals are missing and the others are broken. There were only enough left to make a convincing display of blinky lights and noise when Kavanagh was pretending to use it. That’s why he wouldn’t let me near it.”
“Oh. Crap.” John pressed his hands to his eyes. The pounding in his head was just getting worse. “Look, just go. I’ll catch up with you. Just—” John didn’t remember what he was going to say after that, because the room swung around and then he fell over.
He wasn’t really unconscious, just in a kind of waking delirium that made it really difficult to talk or stand or help while McKay dragged him up, shouldered his arm, and started hauling him up the stairs to the gallery. McKay had taken off his pack to do it, and John hadn’t been able to tell him not to, which was even more annoying. He started to come back to his senses a little, mostly in self-defense, when McKay banged John’s head against a metal support. He grabbed the railing to help steady McKay, who was muttering, “—find a stranded survivor in a stasis container in the middle of a bombed-out Ancient repository, you’d think he was an Ancient, right, but no, this is the Pegasus Galaxy, so he’s a serial killer! And you, you obstinate product of the military industrial complex, expect me to leave you in this filthy pit, surrounded by decomposing genetically altered people, and dead people I might add, like something out of a Dr. Phibes movie—”
“That was Dr. Moreau,” John told him, then the rest of that little speech registered. “Are you still bitching about me telling you to leave me? ’Cause nothing’s changed, you’re going to have to leave me.”
“Can I not emphasize strongly enough the fact that you should shut up right now?”
“Hey, I’m still in command here.” They staggered off the stairs onto the gallery level, and the way John felt at the moment, it made reaching Camp IV on Mount Everest seem like a walk in the park. His knees gave out, and McKay managed to lower him to the floor.
McKay leaned over him, breathing hard. “There may only be two of us left on this hellish planet, Major, and until we can make contact with the others or Atlantis again, we’re an autonomous collective.”
“Go get your pack,” John ordered. His head hurt like crazy, and even the reflected glow from the flash light stung his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m going!” McKay turned back for the stairs.
“And if we’re an autonomous collective, how come you keep telling me to shut up?” John added, as McKay clattered down the steps. He tried to sit up, realized that was a mistake when his stomach lurched and his head swam, and eased back down again.
John watched the dark ceiling swing around until McKay reappeared, the 9mm in his holster, the pack slung over his shoulder, the flashlight stuffed into a pocket. John shoved himself up, grimacing, ignoring nausea and vertigo. McKay caught his arm as John flailed to his feet, saying, “We have to hurry, the Koan are coming back.”
John squinted and saw McKay had the life sign detector in his free hand and it was blinking urgently. At least the Koan weren’t using that damn jammer. He was willing to bet Dorane had taken that with him. “Right, let’s go—Where?”
“Good question.” Sounding a little desperate, McKay hauled him along the dark gallery, back into a narrow passage. “I have a vague idea but I haven’t had a chance to—” they reached a metal door, round like a hatch, standing partly open, and McKay shoved at it “—test it.”
“Good, I love it when we wing it.”
The hatch opened into a landing overlooking a big shadowy room, with more of the swooping pipes overhead. There was a walkway along the wall just under the pipes and McKay helped John along it, then down a series of twisty rock-walled passages and through another hatch. He said in relief, “Good, these passages do connect, I wasn’t certain.” He added, “There’s a control area with sensors and a security system through here that Dorane somehow neglected to point out when we first arrived.” The sarcasm in McKay’s voice was more biting than usual.
“How the hell did you find me?” John demanded. The hatch opened into a small control room with consoles, a holographic screen, and a couple of semi-circular bench seats with gray
padding.
“Did I not just say sensors and security screens—” McKay looked down at him, then pressed his lips together. “Never mind.”
“Oh, right.” John sprawled on one of the benches while McKay bent over the largest station and tapped the touch-pads. John closed his eyes, forced the dizziness down. “Can you find Dorane?”
“Yes, yes, yes, hold on. Let me check the Stargate… Oh.”
“What?” John opened his eyes, saw McKay staring grimly at the flickering screen. He shoved himself upright, nearly lurching to the floor as he leaned forward to see.
It was a long-distance view of the Stargate, in color though fuzzy and pixilated as the system tried to enlarge the distant image. The ’gate held an active wormhole, and a puddlejumper hovered in front of it. Their puddlejumper. John swore.
McKay spread his hands helplessly, his face bleak. “There’s nothing I can do. These are just sensors, cameras, there’s no communications equipment. No weapons. Though if we had weapons what would we do? He’s got our people in there.”
John shook his head, sick. It wasn’t McKay’s fault. “He’ll come back for the Koan, the ones that still follow his orders. After he gets control of our ’gate.”
The tiny jumper on the screen vanished into the worm-hole’s event horizon.
Confusion reigned in the jumper bay for some time before Elizabeth Weir found herself facing their new guest. Lieutenant Ford and Private Kinjo had both been injured and taken off on gurneys, and Dr. Corrigan had seemed confused and probably needed to go to the medlab as well. She had gotten the most information out of Dr. Kavanagh, upset and barely coherent himself. He had told her that they had encountered a group of about fifty refugees from another world hiding in the ruins, that there had been a Wraith attack, and that Dr. Kolesnikova and Corporal Boerne had been killed. The Wraith had withdrawn temporarily but the Stargate was such a distance from the repository that the refugees were afraid to approach it in daylight. They had agreed to come out once night fell.