She paused for a moment outside the door of his office, then squared her shoulders and walked in. “Colonel Sheppard? If you’ve got a minute, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“Sure,” Sheppard said. “Is there a problem?” He looked like he hoped the answer was no. “We just got in.”
“I know,” Jennifer said by way of apology. “But, yes, I think we may have a problem. You know we’ve been trying to figure out how the Wraith retrovirus works, so that we can reverse its effects.”
“Yeah, and?”
Jennifer took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “All of our efforts to transform the Wraith completely into humans have involved essentially writing over the part of their DNA that comes from the Iratus bug with human DNA.”
“I know that much.”
“So, what we keep finding is that the Iratus bug’s regenerative abilities — which are also present in the Wraith — make it very difficult to eradicate the Iratus bug DNA completely from someone’s system. It was possible the time when you were transforming into a bug — ”
Sheppard looked sour. “I try not to remember.”
“Sorry,” Jennifer said. “But that transformation left your body in such an unstable state that it was easy to get your body to reject the alien DNA. The Wraith combination of Iratus bug and human DNA is stable, and in some ways almost self-protective. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that somebody had deliberately designed it that way.”
“You may not be wrong,” Sheppard said. “We know that the Wraith are pretty advanced at genetic engineering, given the way they grow their ships — ”
“Yeah, I try not to remember that,” Jennifer said.
“It would have been pretty cool to have our own hive ship,” Sheppard said, and then, “Joking. That was a joke.”
“Very funny,” Jennifer said. “My point is, I think given a little more time I could work out how to transform a human permanently into a Wraith.”
“If we wanted to do that,” Sheppard said. “Which we don’t, although being able to do it temporarily could be useful.”
“It could be, if we could do it,” Jennifer said. She was aware that she was talking around the point, as if as long as she didn’t say it, it could stay hypothetical, an anxiety to keep her up at night rather than her best professional opinion. “The thing is, I’ve gone through about a hundred computer models, I’ve run simulation after simulation, and… I’m really sorry,” she said. “But I don’t think we can permanently reverse what the Wraith have done to Rodney. I just don’t think it can be done.”
She could see Sheppard’s jaw tightening, see him glance away as if meeting her eyes would betray that he was upset. “I’m sorry,” she said again uselessly. She was aware that she was doing the same thing, shoving her own feelings down under professional distance that left her cold, but she wished he’d say something. It would be easier to play the role of comforter than to watch Sheppard leashing whatever it was he felt about this before he’d meet her eyes.
“All right,” Sheppard said, finally looking back at her. “What can you do?”
“Well,” Jennifer said, trying to assemble her thoughts. “I’m hoping that we can come up with a way to temporarily suppress at least most of the Iratus bug DNA, something that would be safe to use as a long-term therapy. Like Carson’s original retrovirus, but hopefully without global amnesia as a side effect.”
“Yeah, that would be good,” Sheppard said.
“I want to be really clear, though. I don’t know that something like that will work. If not…” Jennifer let out a breath. “I think there’s a pretty good chance that trying out the treatments that we’ve come up with will put so much strain on Rodney’s system that he’s either going to need to feed or… basically, or we’re going to kill him.”
“Well, Rodney feeding isn’t really an option,” Sheppard said. There was something off in his tone, though, and she wished that she had a better idea what was going on behind those eyes.
“No, it’s not,” Jennifer said. “Hopefully, we’ll have enough warning if our treatments are making things worse that we can put him in stasis until we come up with something better.”
“Right,” Sheppard said. He let out a breath. “All right. What can I get you that’ll help?”
Jennifer blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You don’t know how much I wish this was a problem that could be solved by going out and shooting something,” Sheppard said. “There’s probably going to be that part of the problem, and I’m really looking forward to that. But right now, my job is to make sure that you have whatever you need to do your job, so you can figure out a way to help Rodney.”
“You mean, what would help short of having a Wraith bioengineer tell me exactly what they did and what they think might fix it?”
“That’s not out of the question,” Sheppard said. “Todd still owes me one. More than one, the way I figure it.” He looked her over. “How much time have you been spending on this outside of your scheduled work hours?”
Jennifer hoped that didn’t mean she looked as strung out as she felt. “Nobody ever told me I had a schedule,” she said.
“Very funny,” Sheppard said. “How about we see if Daedalus or Hammond can spare one of their physicians to take over your office hours for a while? Because as much as I know we like to think around here that there are more than twenty-four hours in a day, I’m told that’s not actually true.”
“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “Frankly, my office hours are the only time right now that I feel like I’m actually getting any results. At least I can fix sprained ankles and treat strep throat.”
Sheppard shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jennifer said. “And I’ll let you know if I can think of anything else that would help.”
“Okay,” Sheppard said. He glanced around the office as if he still wasn’t entirely comfortable being there. “We’ll figure this out.” Whatever else he might have said was cut off as an alarm sounded from the gateroom below.
“Unscheduled offworld activation!”
“So much for anybody getting more rest,” Jennifer said under her breath as Sheppard headed for the door. At least the mechanical iris was in place.
John hurried into the control room, vaguely aware that Keller had abandoned him. Headed to the infirmary, he assumed, and turned his attention to the situation. Below in the gate room, Marines scrambled into position, weapons at the ready, and the new iris team kicked the generator from stand-by to full ready. Its whine filled the air, and Salawi had to raise her voice a little to be heard above the sound.
“No IDC, sir.”
“Close the iris.”
“Yes, sir.”
The new bell sounded — yet another alarm, John thought — and the sergeant in charge of the iris team hauled back on the lever. Carter and Zelenka had had a long discussion about why it was simpler, and better than a button, something to do with failsafes and the gearing, but he hadn’t been paying much attention, hoped only that it would be simple enough. And faster. The plates were moving, sliding against each other, intersecting to eclipse the event horizon, but it seemed to take forever for them to meet in the middle, the plates interlocking at last to form a spiky metal star. Behind it, the event horizon shimmered blue, casting watery shadows. Zelenka brushed past him and slid into the seat next to Salawi’s, frowning as he touched his keyboard.
“No sign of any transmission,” Salawi said, dubiously, and Zelenka spared her a crooked smile.
“We have seen that before, yes?”
“Sir,” a Marine said, and John turned to take the P90 the young woman handed to him. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Lorne lurch into the control room, P90 dangling from his chest harness. He put down his crutches, braced himself against the console, and tucked the P90 into firing position. John opened his mouth to order him away, but the radio sounded in his ear.