02 - Reliquary (18 page)

“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?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” From his voice, Rodney was giving this serious
consideration. “Not in the ruins. Down by the beach, maybe? I think that would
be nice.”

Listening to the detailed plans for the funeral that John was apparently
going to hold in his copious spare time after Rodney died later that day was
better than listening to unintelligible whispers from the ZPM. John choked about half the water down, made
Rodney drink the rest, and by that time the detector showed the Koan life signs
moving back down below the surface.

When the detector and John’s instinct said it was clear, they found their way
back to the little elevator, went through the side panel, and started up the
ladder. John reached the intensely dusty cubby at the top, sitting on the edge
while below him McKay climbed awkwardly, the ZPM clutched under one arm. A
little daylight leaked through from a sliding panel that no longer fit properly,
enough to tell him that they were on the surface. Then he froze, listening. He
could hear voices. Shrill voices, like people in pain, murmuring in a language
he couldn’t understand. “What the hell is that?”

“What the hell is what?” McKay said from below, breathless with the effort of
the climb. “Would you please consider giving me a hand with this thing?”

John braced his leg across the opening and reached down to help, just as
McKay’s hand slipped. John caught his arm with one hand, grabbed the ZPM that
was slipping out of his grip with the other.

As John deposited the ZPM safely on the floor, McKay got a better grip on the
ladder and pulled himself up. “Okay, that was scary, but I have to admit you
really do have some tactile control with those things.”

“What?” John stared at him. McKay was thoughtfully rubbing his arm just below
the sleeve of his shirt, and John realized that he had grabbed him with his
claws out. But the skin wasn’t broken, just dented. He was more worried about
the voices. “Don’t you hear that?” he demanded.

“Hear what?” McKay looked at him for a long moment, though it must be hard
for him to see in the near darkness. “Major, it’s quiet out there.”

John swallowed in a dry throat.
Oh, this isn’t good.
At least these
voices drowned out the whispering ZPM. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” McKay was regarding him worriedly. “What do you hear?”

“Just people…screaming, and…things. And the ZPM’s been talking to me.”
Knowing you were going to go crazy was one thing; having it actually happening
right this moment was really another.

McKay nodded slowly. “Okay.” His mouth twisted, and he rubbed his forehead.
“Okay. Okay. I have to stop saying okay. Let’s just…try to get out of this
closet.”

John helped him push the panels apart, squeezing his eyes shut. With his eyes
closed, the voices were worse, coming together in a growing swell of shrill
sound. But trying to open his eyes was like being stabbed in the head. As McKay
stepped out of the shaft, John followed him, but he kept a hand pressed over his
eyes. “I can’t see out here.”

“It’s barely dawn.” He heard Rodney’s steps on the gritty floor, pacing back
and forth nervously, nearly drowned out by the rising noise. “Wait, wait. I’m
going to go see if I can find something you can use.”

John sank down beside the wall, barely hearing him over the voices.
This
is not going to work,
he thought, resting his aching head in his hands. He
fumbled the bloody bandana out of his pocket and got it tied around his
forehead, the dark fabric blocking out some of the piercing light. He could live
with not being able to see if he could just shut that noise out of his brain.
Just for one minute. Just for one second.

John wasn’t sure how long Rodney was gone. It took all his concentration just
to keep still, not to start screaming himself. Finally over the cacophony he
heard, “Major! Major, here, I found a pair of sunglasses.”

It still took John moments to realize what they were when McKay put them in
his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the bandana up far enough to
fumble the glasses on. He opened his eyes cautiously. He could see. It was
bright, achingly bright, but the glasses helped. Now he just needed ear plugs.
Mental ear plugs. Or a lobotomy. He could really go for one of those at the
moment. He pushed unsteadily to his feet.

“Those are Boerne’s.” Something in McKay’s voice made John focus on him.
McKay looked sick. “I found him. What was left of him, near where we camped last
night. It must have been the Koan. His clothes were nearby, and those were in
the pocket. Just him, not Corrigan or—God, what’s his name? The kid, the Asian
Marine kid—”

“Kinjo,” John supplied automatically. Rodney’s voice was very far away and
John could barely understand him over the roar of sound.

“Right, they weren’t there. Dorane must have taken him and Corrigan. They
didn’t have the gene or the therapy, did they? Just Boerne.”

“Rodney, I can’t—I have to go.” The voices were rising into a crescendo and
John was terrified of what would happen for the finale. He might be crazy, but
he didn’t want to hurt Rodney.

“Major, don’t! I can help you.” Rodney reached for his arm and John stepped
sideways away from him, moving so fast Rodney flinched.

“You have to get out of here. I can’t—” Waves of sound were crashing in his
head with hurricane intensity, drowning out his thoughts. John held on just long
enough to dump the pack off his shoulder, stooping to set the pistol on top of
it. Then he ran.

“How did they take the operations tower so quickly?” Carson Beckett asked in
frustration. It was really a rhetorical question. They were losing Atlantis, and
there was nothing he could do but look over Radek Zelenka’s shoulder and go mad
with worry.

There were only three casualties in the medlab so far: two botanists with
minor injuries who had managed to escape their lab moments before the alien
what’s-its had arrived, and a badly wounded Marine. Sergeant Bates had dragged
him through the corridor access doors just before Radek had sealed off this
section. Dr. Sayyar was tending to him, leaving Carson with nothing to do but
fret. They had all heard the shooting and the calls for help before the radios
had gone dead, and Carson knew there must be wounded all through the upper
levels of the operations tower; they just couldn’t bloody get to them.
First
Rodney, Sheppard, Irina, and Boerne are killed,
Carson thought, sickened.
They had barely begun to reel from that disaster.
Now we’re inches from
losing the whole city.

Zelenka looked up from the laptop to gesture helplessly. “The aliens must
have come back on the jumpers sent to rescue supposed refugees, but I do not
understand how they took over our systems so quickly. It’s as if they had all
our security codes.”

Carson nodded bleakly. Zelenka had set up his equipment in the back research
bay, and Carson wasn’t certain what he was doing, but it was keeping the
invaders out of the medlab’s section. The other scientists were ransacking the
medlab’s emergency stores, trying to put together things they could use for
weapons, booby traps to protect the corridor. Besides Bates, only two other
members of the expedition’s small military contingent had made it here; they were Marines who had been patrolling the
edge of the city’s secure area and had barely made it to the lab before Radek
had had to seal the corridor. Carson was badly afraid that the others were lying
dead in the ’gate room, where the attack had begun. “Security codes,” he said,
mostly to himself. “You don’t think this Dorane got them out of Rodney or
Sheppard somehow?” He didn’t feel particularly hopeful; it might mean the story
about the Wraith was so much rubbish, but it didn’t mean that Dorane hadn’t
killed both men.

Radek winced, but before he could answer, the Atlantean com system clicked on
and Carson heard a woman’s voice saying, “—try it now, it should be through to
the medlab—”

Startled and hopeful, Radek said, “Dr. Simpson, is that you?”

But it was Elizabeth’s voice that replied, “This is Weir—”

Carson asked urgently, “Elizabeth, are you all right?”

Then Bates pushed in from the other bay, cutting through the confusion to
demand, “Dr. Weir, what’s your situation?”

Elizabeth’s voice was rushed but calm. “I’m in the small science meeting room
below the operations level, with Simpson and some of the operations staff.
Simpson’s managed to keep them from getting the door open.” She took a sharp
breath. “It was Dorane. Sending the jumpers back to the repository was a trap.
And he’s done something to our people. Ford, Teyla, Kavanagh, and the two jumper
crews who came back with the aliens are obeying him like robots, like they were
under some kind of mental control. They captured the ’gate room before we even
knew the aliens were here. I don’t know how he’s—”

The com cut off. “Dr. Weir!” Bates shouted. There was no response.

“My God,” Radek muttered into the sudden silence, sounding horrified. “That
explains the codes. If he is controlling our people…”

Bates’ face could have been carved from stone. He turned to Carson, asking, “Do you know what would cause that?”

“Son, I don’t have a bloody clue.” He wondered if the man could handle this.
He had briefly wondered the same thing about Sheppard, until the Major had taken
a team to a hive ship and brought all their missing people back, except for
Colonel Sumner and one of the Athosians. After that, Carson hadn’t wondered. And
he knew Bates could be something of a bastard, but no one in his right mind
would want Sheppard’s job, and Bates certainly didn’t look as if he wanted it
now. He explained, “I need data, something to work with. If we could get one of
the affected people down here—”

“That’s not an option at the moment, Doctor,” Bates snapped. One of the
Marines called for him and he walked away toward the main part of the lab.

“He is afraid,” Zelenka murmured, turning back to the laptop. “It is bad
enough that Dorane could take hostages. If he can send our own people to fight
us…”

“Aye,” Carson answered, not wanting to hear the rest of it aloud. “It scares
me, too.”

John came back to himself leaning against the rough warm trunk of a tree, at
the edge of the forest that lay past the Star-gate’s platform. Breathing hard,
almost sobbing, he realized he couldn’t hear anything except the rush of the
surf.
That… was freaky,
he thought, cautiously glad he could think at
all. He pushed off from the tree, his legs still shaky from adrenaline overload,
the puncture wounds from the Koan throbbing painfully. Dry leaves crackled under
his boots, reassuringly normal. The breeze was sweet and cool, and birds were
singing somewhere in the forest, the song a strange mix of familiar and exotic.
He could see the ocean through the scattered trees, where the land curved around
to embrace the bay. It wasn’t long after dawn.
I’m running around blind—literally
if I lose these glasses—on an alien world. That’s incredibly stupid.

Without that cacophony in his head, he could think now.
I didn’t imagine
that. It was there.
It had been as real as a punch in the
gut. As a whole lot of punches in the gut. He looked back toward the dead city,
the dark shape of the repository looming over it. It had been like a mental
broadcast that only he—and the Koan?—could hear.

Dorane had said he had developed his own altered version of the ATA gene. And
on their first night here McKay had talked about a theory, that the people who
had taken over the repository after the Ancients had tried to imitate the
Ancient Technology Activation, and that the differences in their version of
whatever field it broadcast was what was making the people with the gene and the
ATA therapy feel so uneasy.