02 - Reliquary (26 page)

He felt ridiculously exposed, and it was hard to remember that for Teyla and
McKay, the emergency lighting was barely existent and the room was almost as
dark as a moonless night. An instant later he heard her footsteps, the light
tread of her boots on the metal. She wasn’t bothering to be quiet; Dorane
probably hadn’t thought to give that order.

John stopped breathing when he heard her come up through the doorway below.
She started up the stairs, and he grimaced. He had been hoping she would cross
the room on the lower level and he could drop down on her from above.

She reached the top of the stairs and started to turn back toward the
corridor access. John launched himself at her the same instant she must have
sensed his presence. She was turning toward him, lifting her P-90 when he
slammed into her. They hit the walkway, John on top, flattening the gun to her
chest. The device was right there pressed between them, in the lower right hand
pocket of her tac vest, the bastardized ATA sending a jolt of pain right through
John’s head. He felt her fingers scrabbling for the P-90’s trigger and used his
claws to rip through the cord holding it around her neck. He jerked it out of
her grasp and lifted up just enough to fling it off the balcony.

She took advantage of the moment to roll them both, knocking him sideways
into the railing and trying to shove him under the lower rail. Sinking his claws
into her tac vest kept him from going off the walkway, and he got the heel of
his hand under her chin and pushed her back. Then it was a mad scramble, with
Teyla trying to do as much damage as possible and tear herself away, and John
trying to hold on and get to the controller. Then he twisted in the wrong
direction to duck a blow to the throat, and she tried to plant a knee in his groin. John
writhed desperately to avoid it, but managed to keep one hand hooked in her
vest. She clawed the pistol out of her holster, but John went for the device
instead, ripping it out of her pocket. She cried out, shrill and pain-filled,
and dropped the pistol, grabbing for the device.

Then McKay yanked it out of John’s hand, slamming it against the walkway to
get the case open and ripping the crystals out.

Teyla froze, gave a heartfelt gasp of relief, and collapsed on top of John.
He slumped, letting his head fall back, taking a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” McKay asked, hovering anxiously over them. “Is she okay?
Teyla?”

Teyla was a warm weight, limp and utterly still. “I think she’s out.” John
rolled her off, McKay catching her and helping him ease her down onto the
walkway. John pushed himself up on one elbow and felt for the pulse in her neck;
it was strong, and she seemed to be breathing normally. He just hoped she wasn’t
in a coma, that they hadn’t just given everybody under the influence of the
control drug brain damage.

McKay nodded, relieved. “If this means everybody he gave that drug to just
collapsed, then all we have is the Koan to worry about.” He winced. “And I said
that like it was a happy thought.”

“It is a happy thought. The Koan we can shoot.” John pushed himself up,
grabbing the railing and leaning on it until he could stand up straight again.
He found the pistol on the walkway, checked the clip and put the safety on, then
tucked it into the back of his belt. He reached down for Teyla. “Help me with
her. Dorane knows her last position and we need to get out of here.”

“Right.” But as McKay took her other arm, Teyla twitched and opened her eyes.
McKay grimaced and muttered, “Uh oh,” but her expression was bewildered and
frightened.

John leaned over her, brushing the tangled hair out of her eyes. He was just relieved she was conscious. “Teyla, it’s us, Sheppard and
McKay. We’ve got to get you moving, all right?”

After a moment, she nodded in relief and recognition, and they got her up off
the walkway and sort of walking between them, though she had difficulty getting
her legs to move. From the hard grip she had on his shoulder and the collar of
McKay’s shirt, John thought she was glad to see them.

They got her off the walkway and into the corridor, John steering them away
from the area near the generator room and in toward the center section of the
city. He wanted desperately to know what was going on in the operations tower,
to find out if Bates had released the prisoners yet and how close he was to—John halted suddenly, making Teyla and McKay stumble. In the floor below his
feet, radiating out of the walls, he felt the ATA rushing back to life and
awareness, a dull roar of sound that started at the center of the city and
spiraled outward. It scared the hell out of him for an instant and he couldn’t
think what was causing it, if the city was about to blow up, sink into the
ocean, or lift off the planet. Then the emergency lights flickered and the swell
of sound dropped a little, settling into what something told him was a normal
level. “I hope that’s what I think it is,” he said under his breath, waiting
tensely for confirmation.

Watching him anxiously, McKay demanded, “Oh God, what now?”

The tenor of the ATA changed and John knew lights were coming on in other
sections. “We’re getting full power back.” With his free hand, he dug the
sunglasses out of his pocket just before the corridor lights brightened to full
strength. He kept his eyes squeezed shut until he could get the glasses on.
“Hopefully that means Bates took back the ’gate room and Grodin’s restarting our
systems.”

“Finally,” McKay said in relief. “If we have the com back and our radio
traffic isn’t jammed—”

Teyla dug her fingers into John’s shoulder. “Major,” she managed to say, her voice weak and uncertain. “I remember—He brought
something with him, in the jumper. Another device…”

“Crap.” John exchanged an incredulous look with McKay. “Another controller?”

“No, a weapon.” She was struggling to get the words out, her face sheened
with sweat. “He said…it would prevent Atlantis from being occupied again.”

McKay looked simultaneously frightened and outraged. “A bomb? We scanned for
that, the repository didn’t have any munitions or explosive materials left,
certainly nothing big enough to do more than—” He stopped suddenly, eyes
widening. “Unless it’s a—”

“A biological weapon,” John finished, dragging them both into motion again.
Teyla was still wearing a headset, probably because Dorane had never bothered to
tell her to take it off. John took it, getting it over his ear while McKay found
the base unit in the pocket of her tac vest and switched it on. “Which jumper,
Teyla?”

“Five, the one…we used to bring the Koan.”

The radio crackled with static and John said, “Bates, come in, this is
Sheppard. What’s your position?”

“This is Bates. We’ve retaken the ’gate room and—”

“Bates, I need you to seal off the jumper bay. We have a possible bioweapon
in Jumper Five—”

John gave Bates the short version of the situation and got an
acknowledgement, the radio cutting off to the sound of Bates yelling for
Ramirez.

“Oh, God.” McKay was muttering under his breath, running through a list of
everything horrible that could be in a biological bomb. “Dorane has to know
about the city’s quarantine protocols—”.

“Yeah. He’s either got a way to turn them off or he’s got something that the
city can’t stop that way.” John knew which one he was betting on. And he felt
like he should have expected this.
Dorane knew how many of us there were, he
knows how big A Atlantis is, that there was no way he could round up all of us. And he
knew we were just that dangerous.
The bioweapon could have been insurance,
making certain there would be no survivors left to free prisoners in the
repository or to build bombs to lob through the ’gate. Or it could just render
everybody helpless for collection by the Koan.

Two corridor turns further, they came to the first working transporter, the
colored crystal doors sliding obediently open as soon as they came within range.
They got Teyla inside, and the destination console with its map of the active
transporters opened for John with a roar of white noise. He realized he hadn’t
heard the ATA as music for a long time, even as weird alien not-quite-music. He
hit the location for the transporter in the operations tower, nearest the ’gate
room.

The trip took less than a heartbeat, but the transporter and everything else
dissolved into an intense burst of agony. As the doors opened John pitched out
and rolled around on the floor, clutching his head, holding in a scream. Finally
the pain faded enough that he realized McKay was kneeling beside him, snarling
at someone, “It’s killing him, what the hell do you think?”

“Rodney, shut up,” John grated out. He could taste blood at the back of his
throat. He told himself,
your brain isn’t actually leaking out of your ears;
it just feels like it.
He managed to get his eyes open and the bright light
stabbed through his head; he didn’t remember losing the sunglasses.

He didn’t know why this was a shock; he had known it was getting
progressively worse, that it wasn’t going to stop, that he was going to get more
and more sensitive to the ATA until it finally killed him. Somehow part of him
just hadn’t believed it until now.
Going through the ’gate would probably
make my head explode.
Not that that was going to be a problem. He heard
Rodney order someone to find Beckett, and John managed to say evenly, “Tell them
we need the hazmat gear up here now.”

“And a medical team,” Rodney added, and then in frustration, “Why the hell didn’t you say that would happen? We didn’t have to use
the transporter—”

Assuming this was directed at him, John interrupted, “I didn’t know that
would happen!” Somebody put the glasses back in his hand, and he managed to get
them on and get his eyes open again.

McKay was kneeling on one side of him, Bates on the other. Bates had one of
the Wraith stunners slung across his back, the curved alien shape of the weapon
contrasting oddly with the business-like P-90 clipped around his neck. Past them
John could see some of the operations staff who must have been released from the
level below, all of them startled and battered and generally traumatized. Peter
Grodin was supporting Teyla, both watching anxiously. John managed to focus on
Bates. “Did you secure the jumper bay?”

“Negative, sir. There were armed Koan guarding the entrance when we arrived.
They’re inside the bay doorway, and we can’t get a clear shot at them.” Bates
actually looked a little rattled, possibly from watching John writhe around on
the floor, and for once he had forgotten to make “sir” sound like an insult. But
Bates was really the very last person John wanted sympathy from.

“Dorane beat us here,” Rodney added, his mouth twisted grimly. “He must have
made a run for the jumper bay as soon as he realized we had the controller
device.”

“Great.” John gripped McKay’s arm and struggled to his feet, trying to make
it look like McKay wasn’t actually holding him up. His head was throbbing,
almost drowning out the hurricane-like rise and fall of the ATA. “We’ve got
control back, right? Can you open the bay doors above the ’gate room?”

McKay looked blank. “Probably. Why? Wouldn’t that—”

John turned to Bates. “Get some stun grenades and a launcher up here.” That
would take out the Koan but wouldn’t harm the jumpers or set off the energy
drones they were armed with.

Bates turned half away, tapping his radio. Rodney finished, “Never mind, I
got it.”

John put his back against the wall, trying to ignore the still-growing buzz
of the ATA and his throbbing head. At least he had been able to borrow a tac
vest and a P-90 from an unconscious Marine. Braced against the corridor wall
opposite him, Bates watched him narrowly. Keeping his voice low, he asked John,
“You sure you’re up for this?”

They were in position in the jumper bay’s access corridor, which was a lousy
place to have to attack. There was a jog in the passage right as it turned into
the bay, forming a small foyer, and the Koan could just stand in there and shoot
anybody who made that last turn into the bay. John just said dryly, “That’s a
really stupid question.”

He was working off pure adrenaline and a burning desire to kill Dorane.
Waiting for the grenades to be brought from the armory, he hadn’t even been able
to sit down for fear he wouldn’t be able to get up again. He had already told
the others that, if the bioweapon was still in the jumper, he would go in for it
alone. At least he hadn’t had to explain why this was best, since Rodney had
told everybody on the control gallery that John was dying. It was one small
relief that Elizabeth had called in, reporting that the Koan had withdrawn when
the controlled Marines guarding their room had collapsed. On John’s
instructions, Bates had told her to stay in the lower levels with the others
until they dealt with the bioweapon. John hadn’t wanted to speak to her himself,
because he was desperately trying to avoid having the “by the way, this is
probably it for me” conversation with anyone.

Over the radio, John could hear the low-voiced discussions in the ’gate room
as Ramirez got the launcher set up. He whispered into his headset, “What’s your
status?”

“Ready, sir.” With the transporters back online it had only taken a few
minutes to get the stun grenades, but the medlab was still scrambling to
organize hazmat and biohazard gear.

John had put Ramirez in the ’gate room with the launcher, and himself, Bates,
Audley, and the only other Marines still mobile enough to hold a gun in the
jumper bay’s access corridor. Most of the military personnel were still
unconscious from the control drug or the stunners; Teyla, who had had some level
of resistance to it that the others hadn’t, was the only one on her feet, and
she was still unsteady enough that John had made her stay down on the control
gallery. Many of the others had been injured in the first Koan attack, and one
man, Masterson, had been killed. “McKay, what about you?”