“Yeah, Teyla told me.” John took a sharp breath. One more civilian he hadn’t been able to protect. She shouldn’t have been here, we never should have brought so many civilians, she should have been home in a lab discovering stuff. “She had the ATA therapy, that was why he killed her.”
McKay looked up, frowning. “I’ve got the ATA therapy.”
“He told me you were dead too.”
“Well, despite what you and Ford think, I’m a hell of a lot faster than Kavanagh at everything, including running in panic down dark corridors.” McKay got the last chain cut away, and John hopped off the slab. He started to tell McKay to give him the pistol, but the dizziness hit again. John dropped to his knees, just barely able to keep himself from doing a face-plant on the stone floor.
“What’s wrong?” McKay asked urgently, leaning over him, fumbling with the flashlight. “Did he shoot you? You should have mentioned it earlier. Rugged stoicism has its place in these situations, but—”
“Can you tell if I feel hot, if I have a fever?” John asked him. He felt like heat was radiating off him in waves. This wasn’t from blood loss, and it wasn’t from getting hit on the head.
McKay sat on his heels and put the back of his hand to John’s forehead. “Yes, you’re burning up. Are you sick? How did you get sick? This is lousy timing—”
“Rodney, just shut up and listen.” John bit his lip. He had to admit it to himself; Dorane hadn’t been lying about the injection. Whatever Teyla had given him, it was starting to take affect. Concussions didn’t give you fevers. But saying it aloud was like giving in to it. “Dorane made Teyla give me a drug.”
“What? Like the mind-control thing, whatever, that he gave the others—”
“No, no. She gave me what he’s been giving the Koan. The drug he developed when he was experimenting on the humans who used to live here. It’s like Beckett’s retrovirus. It was because I had the Ancient gene, that I was born with it instead of needing the therapy like you guys. It’s like he thought I was one of them, or something. And he really hates them.”
In the glow of the flashlight, John saw McKay’s mouth twist down. For a long moment McKay didn’t say anything, then he let his breath out. “Right. I’ll have to get into his database — hopefully he used the Ancient nomenclature — chances are he didn’t take the time to destroy it. Or he couldn’t bear to destroy it. Megalomaniacs are often unable to take those kinds of preventative measures.” He pushed to his feet. “But how am I going to get you up those stairs? Maybe a safety rope—”
John glared up at him, frustrated. “Rodney, you don’t understand—”
“Of course I understand!” Trying to shout quietly, McKay’s voice cracked. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? A nutjob looking for revenge on people who have been dead ten thousand years tried to turn you into a monster by giving you a drug that’s going to wreck havoc with every cell in your body! And will you shut up while I’m trying to think? We need a plan here!”
“Okay, okay! Just calm down!” About the last thing John needed right now was to have to talk McKay down from a panic attack. But part of him knew that if McKay, of all people, had gone all sympathetic, it would have been that much worse. John would much rather have him acting normal, which meant yelling like a crazy man and making it all about him. “But you have to stop him from getting to Atlantis. Or warn them. When he dials the Stargate, you can use that communications suite to—”
“I tried that first, as soon as I could get back into that area. I thought I could call Boerne and the others for help,” McKay said flatly. “That console hasn’t worked in hundreds of years. The key control crystals are missing and the others are broken. There were only enough left to make a convincing display of blinky lights and noise when Kavanagh was pretending to use it. That’s why he wouldn’t let me near it.”
“Oh. Crap.” John pressed his hands to his eyes. The pounding in his head was just getting worse. “Look, just go. I’ll catch up with you. Just—” John didn’t remember what he was going to say after that, because the room swung around and then he fell over.
He wasn’t really unconscious, just in a kind of waking delirium that made it really difficult to talk or stand or help while McKay dragged him up, shouldered his arm, and started hauling him up the stairs to the gallery. McKay had taken off his pack to do it, and John hadn’t been able to tell him not to, which was even more annoying. He started to come back to his senses a little, mostly in self-defense, when McKay banged John’s head against a metal support. He grabbed the railing to help steady McKay, who was muttering, “—find a stranded survivor in a stasis container in the middle of a bombed-out Ancient repository, you’d think he was an Ancient, right, but no, this is the Pegasus Galaxy, so he’s a serial killer! And you, you obstinate product of the military industrial complex, expect me to leave you in this filthy pit, surrounded by decomposing genetically altered people, and dead people I might add, like something out of a Dr. Phibes movie—”
“That was Dr. Moreau,” John told him, then the rest of that little speech registered. “Are you still bitching about me telling you to leave me? ’Cause nothing’s changed, you’re going to have to leave me.”
“Can I not emphasize strongly enough the fact that you should shut up right now?”
“Hey, I’m still in command here.” They staggered off the stairs onto the gallery level, and the way John felt at the moment, it made reaching Camp IV on Mount Everest seem like a walk in the park. His knees gave out, and McKay managed to lower him to the floor.
McKay leaned over him, breathing hard. “There may only be two of us left on this hellish planet, Major, and until we can make contact with the others or Atlantis again, we’re an autonomous collective.”
“Go get your pack,” John ordered. His head hurt like crazy, and even the reflected glow from the flash light stung his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m going!” McKay turned back for the stairs.
“And if we’re an autonomous collective, how come you keep telling me to shut up?” John added, as McKay clattered down the steps. He tried to sit up, realized that was a mistake when his stomach lurched and his head swam, and eased back down again.
John watched the dark ceiling swing around until McKay reappeared, the 9mm in his holster, the pack slung over his shoulder, the flashlight stuffed into a pocket. John shoved himself up, grimacing, ignoring nausea and vertigo. McKay caught his arm as John flailed to his feet, saying, “We have to hurry, the Koan are coming back.”
John squinted and saw McKay had the life sign detector in his free hand and it was blinking urgently. At least the Koan weren’t using that damn jammer. He was willing to bet Dorane had taken that with him. “Right, let’s go — Where?”
“Good question.” Sounding a little desperate, McKay hauled him along the dark gallery, back into a narrow passage. “I have a vague idea but I haven’t had a chance to—” they reached a metal door, round like a hatch, standing partly open, and McKay shoved at it “—test it.”
“Good, I love it when we wing it.”
The hatch opened into a landing overlooking a big shadowy room, with more of the swooping pipes overhead. There was a walkway along the wall just under the pipes and McKay helped John along it, then down a series of twisty rock-walled passages and through another hatch. He said in relief, “Good, these passages do connect, I wasn’t certain.” He added, “There’s a control area with sensors and a security system through here that Dorane somehow neglected to point out when we first arrived.” The sarcasm in McKay’s voice was more biting than usual.
“How the hell did you find me?” John demanded. The hatch opened into a small control room with consoles, a holographic screen, and a couple of semi-circular bench seats with gray padding.
“Did I not just say sensors and security screens—” McKay looked down at him, then pressed his lips together. “Never mind.”