There was nothing in the upper levels of Dorane’s lab except a few dead Koan. John, his eyes squeezed nearly shut, held the flashlight while Rodney got the sealed blast doors open. The life sign detector assured them there was nothing waiting outside, but as the doors slid away, John covered the growing opening with the pistol.
The corridor looked empty, and John stepped out cautiously, making sure there were no Koan equipped with a new sensor-jammer crouched in hiding. He signaled for Rodney to follow him, realized Rodney couldn’t see jack in the dark space, and whispered, “Come on.”
McKay groped his way out into the corridor, the ZPM tucked firmly under his arm, and John grabbed his free hand and guided it to the pack strap on his shoulder. “Hold on to that. Let’s go.”
“Right.” Rodney sounded uncertain, and John didn’t blame him; he wouldn’t have wanted to be blind in this darkness.
Holding the detector across the 9mm, John led the way back through the maze of passages. “Can you see in color?” Rodney asked at one point.
“No. It’s like normal night vision, just a lot better.”
“Huh. It’s probably something to do with an increase in the rhodopsin in your eyes. That’s the chemical in the rod cells in the retina.” He hesitated. “If the flashlight bothers you, what about daylight?”
“Crap,” John muttered. He hadn’t thought of that. If the Koan avoided the surface because they couldn’t see in bright light — A nocturnal lifestyle and incredible night vision might even be considered a trait helpful in surviving the Wraith. But John wasn’t willing to trade it for permanent day-blindness. “We’ll deal with it when we get up there.”
The detector picked up life signs in the corridor leading to the nearest stairwell, so John took another route to the upper level. Since the ZPM was with them rather than powering the repository’s systems, the blue emergency lights were out. John looked around, squinting, trying to get his bearings again. They were near one of the monitoring bays for a cell area; he thought the surface shaft was only a couple hundred yards to the south. He heard a voice whisper and flinched, then realized it was the damn ZPM again. He thought about telling Rodney about it, but he just couldn’t make himself admit it aloud.
Rodney had recaptured the detector, clutching it to the ZPM. “We were wrong about the Koan ignoring the big surface shaft. I’m getting a large concentration of life signs right around it.”
John grimaced. “There’s got to be alternate ways to get up there.” He frowned up at the rocky ceiling, thinking over the layout of the control area not too far above their heads. “Hold it. Right before Kavanagh started acting funny—”
“Oh, and that would be when? 1986?” McKay snorted.
“Recently acting funny. He was out of visual contact in the control area, remember, when his headset went dead?”
“Yes. Yes, you think Dorane was up there with a sensor-jammer, waiting to get one of us alone.” Rodney pivoted, using the detector to check the corridor. “That’s in this direction.”
The ZPM whispered again, and before John could stop himself, he snapped, “Will you shut up?”
His attention on the detector, Rodney said, unperturbed, “You have to wait until I’m talking before you can say that. That’s the way it works. I thought you got that about us.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I — Never mind.”
Finally, using the map from Rodney’s PDA, they found a passage leading to a room in about the right spot. John shielded his eyes while McKay investigated the walls with the flashlight, until McKay finally said, “Hah, here it is. The panel is set right into this wall, so you wouldn’t find it unless you already had a suspicion it was here.” McKay turned the light off so John could help him wedge the panel open. They had found a small one or two person elevator, the metal walls etched with abstract designs. “That must be what lured Kavanagh off alone.” McKay’s tone was deeply self-satisfied at solving that small mystery. “There would have been a brief power signature from the elevator, and Kavanagh followed it into the room. After Dorane gave him the drug, he ordered him to forget it ever happened.”
“We’re going to have to climb the shaft.” John felt around the ceiling, searching for a catch for a trapdoor.
“If this is part of the original Atlantean design, and from the decoration and its position in the building I suspect it is, there should be—” McKay clicked his flashlight on, and John recoiled with a curse. “Sorry. Access ladder.” There was bumping as McKay opened the sliding panel in the elevator’s side. “Here we go.”
The detector still showed several dozen Koan moving around on the ground level somewhere above their heads, and by Rodney’s watch it was about twenty minutes until dawn. Chafing at the delay, John searched around nearby and found a cubby with a grille over it that might have been part of the upper level’s air system at one time. It was far enough away from the small surface shaft that, if the Koan came down that way, they would go unnoticed.
They crouched inside the narrow space, John putting Rodney behind him so he could face the grille, the 9mm in his lap. Rodney propped the detector up behind him, so he could see the screen, but John’s body would block any light from it and keep it from giving away their position. Then he broke out the last of their supplies: a bottle of water and one crushed power bar.
“You can have it,” John told him. “I’m not hungry.” They had split a couple of the bars earlier, before Rodney had gone to sleep, and John had spent some time forcing himself not to throw up since it would have been a waste of their failing resources. He didn’t want to do that again, and he knew Rodney needed the food more than he did.
“Take the water,” Rodney urged him, bopping him in the back with the bottle until he took it. “You’re probably still dehydrated.” John heard him inhaling the candy and licking the wrapper. Then Rodney added, “If we can’t get that ’gate dialed, in just over four hours I’ll be dying of a hypoglycemic coma and you’ll be stuck here alone.”
“Uh huh,” John answered absently. Rodney had been predicting new and increasingly horrific ways for them to die since he had first stepped through the Stargate into Atlantis. “Where do you want me to bury you?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” From his voice, Rodney was giving this serious consideration. “Not in the ruins. Down by the beach, maybe? I think that would be nice.”
Listening to the detailed plans for the funeral that John was apparently going to hold in his copious spare time after Rodney died later that day was better than listening to unintelligible whispers from the ZPM. John choked about half the water down, made Rodney drink the rest, and by that time the detector showed the Koan life signs moving back down below the surface.
When the detector and John’s instinct said it was clear, they found their way back to the little elevator, went through the side panel, and started up the ladder. John reached the intensely dusty cubby at the top, sitting on the edge while below him McKay climbed awkwardly, the ZPM clutched under one arm. A little daylight leaked through from a sliding panel that no longer fit properly, enough to tell him that they were on the surface. Then he froze, listening. He could hear voices. Shrill voices, like people in pain, murmuring in a language he couldn’t understand. “What the hell is that?”
“What the hell is what?” McKay said from below, breathless with the effort of the climb. “Would you please consider giving me a hand with this thing?”
John braced his leg across the opening and reached down to help, just as McKay’s hand slipped. John caught his arm with one hand, grabbed the ZPM that was slipping out of his grip with the other.
As John deposited the ZPM safely on the floor, McKay got a better grip on the ladder and pulled himself up. “Okay, that was scary, but I have to admit you really do have some tactile control with those things.”