Finally he felt moisture on his wrist. He worked his hand around, getting slick wetness everywhere, then pulled with all his strength.
It hurt like crazy, but his hand popped out. “Ow. Ow, ow, ow,” John hissed, fumbling at the other manacle. His fingers were almost too numb to be able to tell, but he couldn’t find a release or even a lock. “Son of a bitch,” he said wearily, letting his abused arm fall limp. The catch or whatever it was must be lower down to prevent just this kind of escape attempt. He was going to have to do the same damn thing to the other wrist, only that manacle didn’t seem to have that extra few millimeters of room. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about the ankle chains if he still couldn’t reach any kind of a release mechanism. But if he could get his boots off maybe—
A scraping sound made him look up toward the gallery. A Koan had opened the gate and stood on the narrow stairway. It had a bloodstained rag wrapped around one leg. John rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Oh, I bet you’re the one I shot.” It had to be the one he had wounded in the passage, when they had found the sensor-jammer. “That’s what this situation needed,” he said sourly.
It started down the narrow stair, limping badly on its wounded leg. It was growling softly to itself, sounding almost amused.
It reached the floor and moved closer to him, sniffing. John said reasonably, “Come on, I know there’s a person in there somewhere. You don’t want to hurt me. Didn’t you hear what Dorane made Teyla do? I’m, you know, one of you now. Or whatever. This isn’t working, is it?” He kept both arms limp; he wasn’t sure it realized he had a hand free.
It circled the slab, passing close enough that he could see its eyes. They were yellow, the pupils dark ovals, and there was no awareness there. They were empty, like looking into the eyes of a shark, and that made its human features just that much more terrible. “I have a bad feeling there’s nobody home in there.” John felt a sick fear settle into his stomach. He gave you something that’s going to make you end up like that. He shoved the thought aside. Maybe it had been a lie, just to torture Teyla and scare the hell out of him. Well, it worked.
The Koan reached the end of the slab and stood thoughtfully, long enough for John to wonder again if maybe he could talk to it. Then it lifted a hand and stabbed its claws into his thigh.
John swore through gritted teeth, reflexively jerking away from the pain and feeling the manacles grind into his flesh. “Oh, yeah, I get it,” he said with a gasp, “I hurt you, you hurt me. We’re even now. All’s forgiven. Bye.”
It pulled its claws free, and he felt blood well up. It moved up the slab to lean over him, one hand resting on his chest, the claws just snagging in the material of his shirt. John held his breath, waited until it started to press down. Then with his free hand, he punched it in the larynx.
It staggered back, clutching at its throat and making gagging noises. But John could tell he hadn’t had the leverage to make it a killing blow. “Oh, crap,” he muttered. The creature eyed him with pure hate, gasping for a breath. Yeah, I’ve done it now, all right.
The lights went out abruptly. Something clanged as it hit the metal floor of the gallery, and a brilliant white light exploded in the darkness. The Koan up there yelled in pain, and John winced away. A quick scatter of shots echoed off the stone while a flashlight beam waved wildly around. John twisted frantically, trying to see who it was. He could tell from the sound that whoever was shooting had a 9mm but—
His Koan buddy snarled angrily and flung itself toward the stairs. The flashlight beam swung toward it, catching it midway up. Another shot from the 9mm dropped it. It sprawled across the steps, twitched a few times, then went still. “Major Sheppard?” It was McKay’s voice, coming from the gallery. “Are you all right?”
“Rodney!” John’s throat went tight with relief. He should have known it; McKay was too smart to get killed. “Yeah, I’m fine, get down here!”
“Good, I didn’t know—” More thumping and clanging and flashlight waving, as McKay must have been wrestling the gate open. He sounded harried and breathless and almost as relieved as John. “—how I was going—” There was a gasp as the gate gave way and muted thuds as he half-climbed, half-fell down the narrow steps “—drag you out of here if you weren’t conscious.” Then McKay was standing over him, waving a 9mm and a pocket flashlight. He shoved the pistol back into its holster and pointed the light around, demanding, “Are you hurt?”
“Rodney, Rodney, not in the eyes,” John said urgently, twisting his face away. His eyes still felt sunburned from the explosion of light up on the gallery.
“Sorry.” McKay juggled the flashlight and something that had the low power hum of a laser cutting tool. The light flicked around to the manacles. “You’re bleeding — Did that thing bite you?” he asked worriedly. “God knows what kind of diseases—”
“It clawed my leg a little, and that manacle was loose and I was using the blood to work my wrist—” With McKay, alive and well, standing over him apparently loaded down with weapons and tools, it now sounded kind of crazy. “I was trying to escape, okay? What did you do up there, what was that explosion?”
“Potassium perchlorate and aluminum powder. I found a biochem lab that still had some viable materials.” McKay put the flashlight in John’s free hand, positioning it so the beam would illuminate the other wrist manacle. “Hold that still. And don’t move.”
McKay cut through the manacle, and John sat up, then nearly reeled over as a wave of dizziness hit. He felt flushed and hot and had to take a deep breath to keep from throwing up.
McKay was too busy working on the ankle restraints to notice; he snapped, “Will you hold that light still? I don’t think either of us wants any accidental amputations here.”
John pushed himself up again, taking deep breaths to clear his head and trying to steady the light. It might be blood loss. He could see now that his wrist was bleeding a lot more than he had thought, to the extent where trying to free the other arm the same way might have been a big mistake. His last mistake. While McKay cut through the ankle chains John held the flashlight in his mouth so he could dig out a bandana to wrap around his wrist. His pockets were empty of anything else that might be useful. He said around the flashlight, “He took the others to the surface, to the jumper. They’re going to Atlantis. We need to get up there.”
“Yes, I thought it must be something like that.” Sounding exasperated, McKay asked, “What the hell was up with Kavanagh? He attacked Ford.”
John tied off the bandana and took the light out of his mouth, holding it out for McKay. His eyes still hurt, but considering the massive headache and the puncture wounds, it was the least of his problems. “Teyla said Dorane got Kavanagh with this mind-control drug. It works like the Ancient Technology Activation, but on people. Once you’ve been dosed with it, apparently you just do what he wants you to do, you can’t stop yourself. He got Kavanagh with it when we first arrived, and Kavanagh passed it on to Teyla. The drug doesn’t work too well if you have the Ancient gene or the therapy, so he couldn’t get Kolesnikova or you or me. It didn’t take right away on Teyla, probably because she’s Athosian.”
McKay’s voice was grim. “The sick bastard killed Irina, did you know? I found her body.”