by Martha Wells
After an endless moment the pain receded, and John managed to gasp a breath. His eyes were watering and he was trembling and Rodney was hovering over him repeating, “What happened? What happened? What happened?”
“Just…shut up for a minute. I’ll tell you when I know.” His stunned brain was starting to process sensation again. Biting his lip, he wiggled his fingers tentatively. Oh, yeah, it’s worse. He pushed himself upright, Rodney gripping his shoulder when he nearly swayed over. John leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with. He pulled the first glove off.
McKay made a garbled noise, then coughed and managed to say, “Well, that was… Not entirely unexpected.”
John had claws. Short and curved and silvery-gray, they protruded from his fingertips, formed out of what had been his fingernails. He flexed his fingers and they slid back into their nearly invisible sheaths. He knew the Koan had claws, but somehow, whatever Rodney said, he hadn’t expected this. He pulled off the other glove to examine that set, wondering what else he should be expecting.
Rodney was staring, fascinated. “That’s so—” He reached out, carefully pressed John’s fingertip and a half-inch of claw slid out. “It’s very like a cat’s claws. I wonder—”
“Hey, stop that.” Indignant, John yanked his hand back. “That feels weird.”
“It looks pretty weird, too,” Rodney admitted readily.
John took a deep breath. It had been a really, really long day, and he thought his and Rodney’s relationship could benefit from a time-out just at the moment. He used his forearm to rub the sweat off his face. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Look, you need to get some sleep before dawn. Give me the pistol and I’ll watch the detector.”
McKay sat up straight, eyeing him narrowly. “No.”
“Huh?” John stared at him, then pressed his lips together. Even though it proved his argument, it still pissed him off, which ought be a sign of approaching insanity, only it actually felt pretty normal. “Oh, a minute ago, everything’s fine, and now my claws grew out, so you don’t want me to have our only weapon. Doesn’t that prove my point?”
“No, it does not. Nothing proves your point, because your point is stupid and defeatist. Note that I said stupid first before defeatist, because that’s the salient feature of your wholly ridiculous point.” Rodney unclipped his holstered sidearm and held it in his lap, staring at it. Then he said, “You have to give me your word you won’t shoot yourself.”
“What? Oh.” John had forgotten about Dr. Gall. A young guy, a super genius like Rodney, with his life mostly sucked out of him by a Wraith, he had put a bullet in his own head so Rodney wouldn’t have to stay with him in the downed Wraith ship. So Rodney could go help John. John looked at the ceiling, around at the stained walls, uncomfortable. Would he use a gun on himself? He didn’t think so, but then Gall probably hadn’t planned on suicide before the Wraith had taken him, either. Feeling incredibly awkward, he finally said, stiffly, “I give you my word I won’t shoot myself.”
Rodney looked at him for such a long moment that John turned shy and picked up the life sign detector, fiddling with it to make sure he could still make the buttons work. It was a little strange working with the claws when they kept coming out unexpectedly. It was like having extended fingertips with no feeling.
Finally Rodney put the pistol on the floor next to John. He shifted over to pick up the flashlight, saying, “I’m going to turn this off to save the batteries. We only have two flashlights and no spares.”
“Good idea.” John left the gun where it was. He just hoped Rodney wouldn’t have reason to regret asking him for that promise.
In his work area in one of Atlantis’ large airy rooms, Radek Zelenka sat in front of three laptops, trying desperately to concentrate on any one of the five diagnostics and two data analyses he had in progress. He had once liked this room very much, but now the bright sunlight visible through the softly colored window panels seemed like a mockery. He hadn’t been able to eat lunch, and his ration of the terrible coffee from the pot in the main lab bay sat in his stomach like a pool of motor oil. He couldn’t stop thinking about the news Teyla and the others had returned with.
Boerne the Marine he had not known well, just enough to speak to casually in the mess hall, or when someone played a DVD in the evening. Irina Kolesnikova he had worked with over several projects, and his heart hurt for her.
But the worst part was that there was a good chance Rodney and Sheppard were still alive, terribly alive, sealed up in a Wraith hive ship to be drained at their captors’ leisure.
Radek winced and rubbed his eyes, trying to banish that image. It was one thing for friends to be killed in a war, to grieve and to know that they were at least safe from further pain and terror. To know they might be suffering for days yet was quite another.
He set his jaw, turned to yet another laptop and brought up the connection to one of the Ancient data readers. He had pulled the damaged memory core out of the pillar and had been trying to reconstruct the scattered fragments of data. If he could concentrate on nothing else, he could at least submerge himself in the intricate and elegant patterns of the Ancients’ data matrix.
Sometime later Radek sat back, frowning. “That is very odd.”
At the nearest table, Ling was paging through reports, frowning in concentration. She glanced up, blinking. “What’s odd?”
Radek shook his head slowly. He had been able to pull together and decipher one section of the damaged core, the one containing the ’gate address to the repository. “The gate on Dorane’s world was altered so only the Atlantis ’gate could connect to it.”
Ling pushed her hair back, her mind still obviously on her own analysis. “By who? The Wraith?”
“No, no. By the Ancients.” It was supposed to be a meeting place. Why would they alter… Radek could think of a lot of reasons why the Ancients might think that was a good idea. None of them were good reasons.
At the briefing earlier, Elizabeth and Bates had outlined the plan to gate back to the repository after night fell on the planet, taking two puddlejumpers to escort Dorane’s people to the Stargate. They should be leaving soon—Zelenka checked his watch. He pushed to his feet, found his headset on the desk and put it on. “Dr. Weir, I need to speak with you immediately.”
No answer.
“Dr. Weir?”
Faint static. A sinking feeling settled in Radek’s stomach that had nothing to do with the bad coffee. But she might simply be taking a personal moment. He tried again, “Dr. Grodin? Peter, are you there?”
No answer. Ling and the two other technical assistants in the lab were now watching him worriedly. He tried, “Sergeant Bates, come in please.”
No answer. If the head of city security was not answering—There was no reason to panic, but Radek found himself pausing to tell the others, “Get your laptops, emergency gear. Just in case. I have a funny feeling. Humor me.” He had barely finished speaking before they were up and scrambling to stuff computers and equipment in carrying cases. Radek tried the radio again. “Carson, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Radek.” The answer from the medical lab was gratifyingly quick. Radek had never been so glad to hear Beckett’s voice, except possibly for the time he had gotten his leg stuck in a faulty transporter door out on the southwest pier. “What’s up?”
“Carson, I can’t raise the operations tower. Or Bates.”
Radek heard Carson say to someone in the background, “Katrien, love, see if you can reach anyone in the operations tower.” There were muffled voices for a few moments. Then Carson’s voice said sharply, “Radek, you’d better get yourself down here. We can’t raise them either.”
“We’ll be with you in a moment.” Radek cut the connection. His lab staff were gathered around him now, clutching emergency packs and laptops, watching him anxiously. “It’s probably nothing,” Radek said, opening a compartment in the table and taking out the holstered pistol th
at lay inside. “But we’ll pick up the others on this level on the way.”
They were halfway down the hall when the lights went out.
John was stretched out on his side, his eyes on the softly glowing screen of the life sign detector, watching the Koan move around on this level. McKay had been so tired he had fallen asleep almost before he lay down. The holstered 9mm still lay between them, and John had left it there, just checking to make sure it was loaded.
After a time he realized the fever was completely gone, leaving him with a dry mouth and probably a good case of dehydration, but blessedly cool. Except for McKay’s soft breathing, it was very quiet, and John kept imagining that he could hear the detector making a soft, almost inaudible humming noise. Listening to it, he tried to decide if it was really there and he had just never heard it before, because he had never used a detector in a place this quiet. Then he started imagining that the ZPM was making soft little whispery noises to itself, and that was just weird.
John was deeply glad when McKay’s watch alarm beeped.
Beside him, McKay groaned, batted at his watch until he got the alarm turned off, and sat up, moving like an old man.
John asked him, “Hey, you okay?” McKay usually woke up instantly. John hadn’t noticed it earlier, but he was pale and bleary-eyed, like a drunk on a bender. It might be the lack of actual food; they hadn’t had anything except the power bars since yesterday.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” Yawning, McKay scrubbed at his eyes, took the detector away from John, and peered at the screen. “I dreamed Atlantis was attacked by a hive ship, and Samantha Carter showed up with SG-1 and rescued us. It was a little humiliating, but under the circumstances I was willing to cope with that.”
In the past couple months, John had mostly dreamed about killing or getting killed. He meant to make a joke, to ask if Colonel Carter had brought beer with her and what was she wearing, but instead what came out was, “That’s not going to happen, Rodney.”
“I know.” McKay sighed and fumbled for the flashlight tucked into his vest pocket.
That was when John realized something else had changed. It had happened so slowly during the last couple of hours that he hadn’t noticed. “Hey, don’t turn on the light just yet.”
McKay had finally managed to get the flashlight out of his pocket and right side up. “What?” He squinted at John in the darkness, then went still. “Did something else happen? I mean, while I was asleep, did…something change?”
“No, not like that! Oh, wait.” John realized he had better check and make sure. He did a quick personal inventory, as well as he could without a mirror. No, spiny things still the same size, claws as normal, nothing else obvious. “No, it’s just that I can see in the dark, really well. Better than really well. Like—” He picked up a power bar from their tiny stack of supplies. The ambient light from the detector’s screen was enough to light the whole room for him. “I can read the writing on this wrapper. Jeez, these things are mostly preservatives.”
“Oh. That’s good, though. That’ll come in handy.” Rodney rubbed his face, obviously still trying to wake himself up. “Not the preservatives, the seeing in the dark thing.”
McKay stuffed everything in his pack, and John turned his back so he could use the light to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind. John took the 9mm and put the remaining extra clip in his pocket. They couldn’t afford to meet many Koan on the way.
John slung Rodney’s pack over his shoulder, so Rodney could carry the ZPM. John didn’t ask what happened if you dropped one of those things. He guessed that either it would be impressively shock-resistant and nothing would happen, or the resulting explosion would be so violent they wouldn’t be in any position to care.
There was nothing in the upper levels of Dorane’s lab except a few dead Koan. John, his eyes squeezed nearly shut, held the flashlight while Rodney got the sealed blast doors open. The life sign detector assured them there was nothing waiting outside, but as the doors slid away, John covered the growing opening with the pistol.
The corridor looked empty, and John stepped out cautiously, making sure there were no Koan equipped with a new sensor-jammer crouched in hiding. He signaled for Rodney to follow him, realized Rodney couldn’t see jack in the dark space, and whispered, “Come on.”
McKay groped his way out into the corridor, the ZPM tucked firmly under his arm, and John grabbed his free hand and guided it to the pack strap on his shoulder. “Hold on to that. Let’s go.”
“Right.” Rodney sounded uncertain, and John didn’t blame him; he wouldn’t have wanted to be blind in this darkness.
Holding the detector across the 9mm, John led the way back through the maze of passages. “Can you see in color?” Rodney asked at one point.
“No. It’s like normal night vision, just a lot better.”
“Huh. It’s probably something to do with an increase in the rhodopsin in your eyes. That’s the chemical in the rod cells in the retina.” He hesitated. “If the flashlight bothers you, what about daylight?”
“Crap,” John muttered. He hadn’t thought of that. If the Koan avoided the surface because they couldn’t see in bright light—A nocturnal lifestyle and incredible night vision might even be considered a trait helpful in surviving the Wraith. But John wasn’t willing to trade it for permanent day-blindness. “We’ll deal with it when we get up there.”
The detector picked up life signs in the corridor leading to the nearest stairwell, so John took another route to the upper level. Since the ZPM was with them rather than powering the repository’s systems, the blue emergency lights were out. John looked around, squinting, trying to get his bearings again. They were near one of the monitoring bays for a cell area; he thought the surface shaft was only a couple hundred yards to the south. He heard a voice whisper and flinched, then realized it was the damn ZPM again. He thought about telling Rodney about it, but he just couldn’t make himself admit it aloud.
Rodney had recaptured the detector, clutching it to the ZPM. “We were wrong about the Koan ignoring the big surface shaft. I’m getting a large concentration of life signs right around it.”
John grimaced. “There’s got to be alternate ways to get up there.” He frowned up at the rocky ceiling, thinking over the layout of the control area not too far above their heads. “Hold it. Right before Kavanagh started acting funny—”
“Oh, and that would be when? 1986?” McKay snorted.
“Recently acting funny. He was out of visual contact in the control area, remember, when his headset went dead?”
“Yes. Yes, you think Dorane was up there with a sensor-jammer, waiting to get one of us alone.” Rodney pivoted, using the detector to check the corridor. “That’s in this direction.”
The ZPM whispered again, and before John could stop himself, he snapped, “Will you shut up?”
His attention on the detector, Rodney said, unperturbed, “You have to wait until I’m talking before you can say that. That’s the way it works. I thought you got that about us.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I—Never mind.”
Finally, using the map from Rodney’s PDA, they found a passage leading to a room in about the right spot. John shielded his eyes while McKay investigated the walls with the flashlight, until McKay finally said, “Hah, here it is. The panel is set right into this wall, so you wouldn’t find it unless you already had a suspicion it was here.” McKay turned the light off so John could help him wedge the panel open. They had found a small one or two person elevator, the metal walls etched with abstract designs. “That must be what lured Kavanagh off alone.” McKay’s tone was deeply self-satisfied at solving that small mystery. “There would have been a brief power signature from the elevator, and Kavanagh followed it into the room. After Dorane gave him the drug, he ordered him to forget it ever happened.”
“We’re going to have to climb the shaft.” John felt around the ceiling, searching for a catch for a trapdoor.
“If this is
part of the original Atlantean design, and from the decoration and its position in the building I suspect it is, there should be—” McKay clicked his flashlight on, and John recoiled with a curse. “Sorry. Access ladder.” There was bumping as McKay opened the sliding panel in the elevator’s side. “Here we go.”
The detector still showed several dozen Koan moving around on the ground level somewhere above their heads, and by Rodney’s watch it was about twenty minutes until dawn. Chafing at the delay, John searched around nearby and found a cubby with a grille over it that might have been part of the upper level’s air system at one time. It was far enough away from the small surface shaft that, if the Koan came down that way, they would go unnoticed.
They crouched inside the narrow space, John putting Rodney behind him so he could face the grille, the 9mm in his lap. Rodney propped the detector up behind him, so he could see the screen, but John’s body would block any light from it and keep it from giving away their position. Then he broke out the last of their supplies: a bottle of water and one crushed power bar.
“You can have it,” John told him. “I’m not hungry.” They had split a couple of the bars earlier, before Rodney had gone to sleep, and John had spent some time forcing himself not to throw up since it would have been a waste of their failing resources. He didn’t want to do that again, and he knew Rodney needed the food more than he did.
“Take the water,” Rodney urged him, bopping him in the back with the bottle until he took it. “You’re probably still dehydrated.” John heard him inhaling the candy and licking the wrapper. Then Rodney added, “If we can’t get that ’gate dialed, in just over four hours I’ll be dying of a hypoglycemic coma and you’ll be stuck here alone.”
“Uh huh,” John answered absently. Rodney had been predicting new and increasingly horrific ways for them to die since he had first stepped through the Stargate into Atlantis. “Where do you want me to bury you?”