Rodney tried his radio again and snarled in irritation when all he could pick up was static. He had to get back up to Sheppard and Teyla, but the route he had taken down here passed right through the last known position of the highest concentration of Koan. He checked the readings the detector had managed to take before the jammer had cut in, hoping for more options. Hmm, that’s intriguing, he thought, studying a high concentration of power signatures in this lower area. It just might be a lab or other work area. Labs meant tools, and weapons. His kind of weapons. Taking a deep breath, Rodney pushed to his feet.
John hit the floor face first, and everything after that was hazy and vague. He remembered being dragged up off the floor by Koan — he knew they were Koan from the smell, though he couldn’t get his eyes open all the way. Then he was being carried and had a strange upside down view of a dim corridor.
He came to when he was dumped face down onto a cold stone surface. He rolled over in time to get slammed on his back by another Koan. He punched it, feeling bone crunch under his fist in a particularly satisfying way, and it staggered back. But as he tried to push himself up another jumped on him, straddling him and pinning him down. He writhed and shoved, getting a knee up into a vital spot and a hand on the creature’s throat. Its snarl turned into a choked gasp, its claws digging painfully into his shoulders through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Then somebody else slammed John’s head back into the stone.
He didn’t lose consciousness completely, but he was woozy enough that he couldn’t resist when the Koan moved around, locking his wrists and ankles into manacles. When he finally managed to fight past the throbbing in his head and the scene came back into focus, Teyla was leaning over him. There were two Koan standing behind her impatiently, as if they were waiting for her. And she still had her P-90 slung around her neck.
John blinked and squinted, for a moment thinking he was having a head-injury-induced hallucination. Something is wrong with this picture. Maybe it was him. “Teyla — What—”
She braced her hands on the stone thing he was lying on, shuddered, winced, then choked out, “I am sorry, Major.”
“Sorry for what?” John said. He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. He felt weirdly pathetic, like they had been dating and she was breaking up with him and he had no idea why. His blurred vision was starting to clear, and he saw that the chamber they were in was high-ceilinged and round, almost like a large well. There were a couple of lights high in the ceiling focused in on the lower part of the well, leaving the top in half-shadow. There was a gallery up there with metal railings; a gate led to a narrow spiral stairway that curved down the wall to reach this lower level.
“I have to do what he says. He has something, a drug, it affects the mind, it forces you to obey him.” Teyla squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “He says you should understand it. It works on humans the way the Ancestors’ gene works on their machines.”
John stared. “Are you serious? Sorry, stupid question.” He tested the chains, putting his full strength, augmented by the adrenaline now pumping freely through his body, against each one, but the links held firmly. They were solidly cemented into the block and probably would have held a Wraith, let alone him. He was missing his tac vest and belt but his shirt, pants, and boots were still present and accounted for, which made the situation marginally less terrifying. He could feel that his sidearm was gone, as well as his knives, probably including the little one that he kept for the can and bottle opener. “He just — What, you can hear him in your head?”
She gritted her teeth. “Yes. It’s like nothing—” She shook her head violently. “I cannot make it stop. I cannot make myself stop.”
John was getting a scary picture of what had happened. Teyla hadn’t been ill up in the lab, she had been fighting off a drug she hadn’t even known she had been given. “Teyla, you’re strong, you’re the strongest person I know, you can fight it.”
She just took a sharp breath, her face strained with effort. “He gave it to Dr. Kavanagh, not long after we first arrived. Dr. Kavanagh did not know he had been infected, and was forced to pass it along to me. But it did not work on me as quickly as it should have. He has now given it to Ford also. It does not work well on those who have the gene or the gene therapy.” For an instant, tight anger replaced the fear and frustration on her face. “He killed Dr. Kolesnikova, I saw her body. He says the Koan have killed Dr. McKay.”
“No.” John’s gut went cold. Rodney’s dead. God, Kolesnikova should never have come here. I can’t believe Rodney’s dead.
“He is going to use us to take the jumper back to Atlantis, he wants to—” Teyla gasped in pain and her brow furrowed with effort. “He says I have to give you this.”
She lifted her hand. In it was a little box of black metal or plastic, hardly bigger than her palm. She turned it and as it caught the light he saw one side was all needles, like an old polio vaccination injector.
“By ‘give’ I guess you don’t mean you’re going to hand it to me.” John’s throat was dry. “Is that the mind-control drug thing?” He jerked involuntarily on the chains, feeling sweat break out all over his body; the thought of having Dorane in his head giving him orders he was helpless to resist…
“No.” Teyla stared down at the device in her hand as if she was holding a venomous snake and was powerless to drop it. “This is the retrovirus he gave the Koan, and the Thesians, to make them like the Koan so he could experiment on them. Some of the Thesians also had the Lantian gene — he said this made them all go mad.” She choked on the words, but couldn’t seem to stop herself. “He thought since you believed so strongly in the Lantians’ genetic superiority, you would benefit from the demonstration.”
“Hey, I did not say I believed in the genetic superiority of anybody, that’s stupid Nazi-talk from a bad movie, I said—” He couldn’t remember what he had said. She’s really going to do this. “Teyla, don’t! Teyla, try to fight it!”
“I am trying!” He saw her arm tremble. Her face was set in harsh lines, her jaw clenched with effort. Then she slammed the injector down onto the underside of his bare arm, jerking it away almost immediately.
John yelled, more from surprise than pain. It had been too quick to hurt much; he craned his neck to see the neat square of red marks on his arm. The skin there tingled and burned, and he felt a sudden flush of heat through his triceps.
Teyla stepped back, staring horrified at the injector in her hand. She started to speak and her voice cracked. She managed to say, “He is leaving you here, with the Koan that are too far gone into madness to obey him well. They may release you and let you live, to join them. Or they might eat you. It is their choice.” She turned away, nearly fell across the first steps of the stairway, then stumbled up.
“Teyla!” John yelled after her, but she didn’t pause, didn’t answer, didn’t look back. She reached the top and disappeared into the shadows of the upper gallery.
He swore, wincing as he dropped his head back against the stone. The warmth was already fading from his arm, though he could still feel the sting of the needles. Maybe Dorane was lying, maybe it was nothing. He didn’t feel any different, but he was still half-expecting to die of anaphylactic shock in the next few minutes.
John could hear more Koan up on the gallery, making those soft noises at each other that sounded like distorted speech. This place looked an awful lot like an operating theater or a room for experiments that you needed to watch but that you definitely didn’t want to get too close to. Neither of which was a pleasant thought.
He took a deep breath. Okay, think. Get yourself out of this. The manacle on his right arm was just a little loose. John worked his wrist, gritting his teeth, through sharp pain to dull pain to numbness, but he couldn’t drag his hand out of the manacle. Hold it, now how do magicians do this? Oh, that’s right, they swallow the keys first. Or dislocate a joint or something. But there was another way. The manacle hadn’t been machined very well, and one edge was a little sharper than the other. John ground his inner wrist against it, grimacing. It was a little like trying to cut yourself with a spork; a sharper edge would have hurt a lot less. But he only needed a little blood, just enough to lubricate his skin.