02 - Reliquary (24 page)

Bates nodded sharply, his expression of concentrated suspicion changing
briefly to relief. The Wraith used 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 intrusive; 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.”

Beckett nodded sharply. “Right. Don’t worry about us.” He shook his head
suddenly, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Look, just don’t—Don’t give up. Give me a chance to fight this. I’ll have my headset on. As soon
as you can call us back, do it.”

That was the sympathy thing again. John just nodded, and followed the others
down into the access.

When John strolled up the central stairs, he found the large group of Koan
waiting at the door to the medlab corridor. “So where have you guys been?” John
asked them. “I was looking all over the place for you.” He was starting to feel
warm, though he wasn’t sweating. He knew it was him; he could tell the
circulation system in this section was still running, drawing in cool outside
air.

Before leading him to Dorane, the Koan searched him again, making him glad
for resisting the temptation to take a side trip with Bates to the armory for
some grenades. Explosives were one thing that might be effective against the
personal shield, since they didn’t have to work against the body inside the
forcefield, just the structural integrity of whatever building that person was
standing in. But despite the difficulty of smuggling any kind of weapon into the
same room with Dorane, the man would be too close to the naquadah generators,
and the naquadah generators were too close to the operations tower and the
Stargate, which was made from naquadah, and from what John understood, that
could add up to losing a much larger chunk of the city than he was willing to
part with. But if it came down to it… He would rather lie down in an open
field on a Wraith planet with a “get it here” sign than let Dorane take any
people back to the repository. And John didn’t think Dorane was the type to cut
his losses and make a run for the Stargate before the last possible moment. If
he couldn’t take the expedition members back with him, he would kill as many as
he could.

The door to the generator room was open, and the Koan led John inside. Dorane was standing with several Koan, Ford, and two Marines.
Dorane looked even worse than he had in the ’gate room; his eyes were yellow and
bloodshot and his skin was gray. Maybe when he said the atmosphere of Atlantis
was inimical to him, he hadn’t been exaggerating.

McKay, crouched on the floor beside the generator, looked up warily. He was
surrounded by open access panels and disconnected crystal conduit. Kavanagh, his
expression blank, stood nearby holding a toolkit. “I’m back,” John announced
unnecessarily. He was listening hard for a faint thread of discord among
Atlantis’ whispery harmonics, and the ATA was relatively quiet in here. The
naquadah generator was Earth manufacture, not Ancient, and the only other tech
he could hear was the door control panels and Dorane’s personal shield.
So
where the hell is he keeping this thing?
It had to be nearby. Even if it
didn’t have to be physically close to work, John figured Dorane was too cautious
to let it out of his control.
Unless he has it on him somewhere, and the
shield is just so loud it’s covering up any noise from the control device.