“What?” John stared at him. McKay was thoughtfully rubbing his arm just below the sleeve of his shirt, and John realized that he had grabbed him with his claws out. But the skin wasn’t broken, just dented. He was more worried about the voices. “Don’t you hear that?” he demanded.
“Hear what?” McKay looked at him for a long moment, though it must be hard for him to see in the near darkness. “Major, it’s quiet out there.”
John swallowed in a dry throat. Oh, this isn’t good. At least these voices drowned out the whispering ZPM. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” McKay was regarding him worriedly. “What do you hear?”
“Just people…screaming, and…things. And the ZPM’s been talking to me.” Knowing you were going to go crazy was one thing; having it actually happening right this moment was really another.
McKay nodded slowly. “Okay.” His mouth twisted, and he rubbed his forehead. “Okay. Okay. I have to stop saying okay. Let’s just…try to get out of this closet.”
John helped him push the panels apart, squeezing his eyes shut. With his eyes closed, the voices were worse, coming together in a growing swell of shrill sound. But trying to open his eyes was like being stabbed in the head. As McKay stepped out of the shaft, John followed him, but he kept a hand pressed over his eyes. “I can’t see out here.”
“It’s barely dawn.” He heard Rodney’s steps on the gritty floor, pacing back and forth nervously, nearly drowned out by the rising noise. “Wait, wait. I’m going to go see if I can find something you can use.”
John sank down beside the wall, barely hearing him over the voices. This is not going to work, he thought, resting his aching head in his hands. He fumbled the bloody bandana out of his pocket and got it tied around his forehead, the dark fabric blocking out some of the piercing light. He could live with not being able to see if he could just shut that noise out of his brain. Just for one minute. Just for one second.
John wasn’t sure how long Rodney was gone. It took all his concentration just to keep still, not to start screaming himself. Finally over the cacophony he heard, “Major! Major, here, I found a pair of sunglasses.”
It still took John moments to realize what they were when McKay put them in his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the bandana up far enough to fumble the glasses on. He opened his eyes cautiously. He could see. It was bright, achingly bright, but the glasses helped. Now he just needed ear plugs. Mental ear plugs. Or a lobotomy. He could really go for one of those at the moment. He pushed unsteadily to his feet.
“Those are Boerne’s.” Something in McKay’s voice made John focus on him. McKay looked sick. “I found him. What was left of him, near where we camped last night. It must have been the Koan. His clothes were nearby, and those were in the pocket. Just him, not Corrigan or — God, what’s his name? The kid, the Asian Marine kid—”
“Kinjo,” John supplied automatically. Rodney’s voice was very far away and John could barely understand him over the roar of sound.
“Right, they weren’t there. Dorane must have taken him and Corrigan. They didn’t have the gene or the therapy, did they? Just Boerne.”
“Rodney, I can’t — I have to go.” The voices were rising into a crescendo and John was terrified of what would happen for the finale. He might be crazy, but he didn’t want to hurt Rodney.
“Major, don’t! I can help you.” Rodney reached for his arm and John stepped sideways away from him, moving so fast Rodney flinched.
“You have to get out of here. I can’t—” Waves of sound were crashing in his head with hurricane intensity, drowning out his thoughts. John held on just long enough to dump the pack off his shoulder, stooping to set the pistol on top of it. Then he ran.
Chapter Eight
“How did they take the operations tower so quickly?” Carson Beckett asked in frustration. It was really a rhetorical question. They were losing Atlantis, and there was nothing he could do but look over Radek Zelenka’s shoulder and go mad with worry.
There were only three casualties in the medlab so far: two botanists with minor injuries who had managed to escape their lab moments before the alien what’s-its had arrived, and a badly wounded Marine. Sergeant Bates had dragged him through the corridor access doors just before Radek had sealed off this section. Dr. Sayyar was tending to him, leaving Carson with nothing to do but fret. They had all heard the shooting and the calls for help before the radios had gone dead, and Carson knew there must be wounded all through the upper levels of the operations tower; they just couldn’t bloody get to them. First Rodney, Sheppard, Irina, and Boerne are killed, Carson thought, sickened. They had barely begun to reel from that disaster. Now we’re inches from losing the whole city.
Zelenka looked up from the laptop to gesture helplessly. “The aliens must have come back on the jumpers sent to rescue supposed refugees, but I do not understand how they took over our systems so quickly. It’s as if they had all our security codes.”
Carson nodded bleakly. Zelenka had set up his equipment in the back research bay, and Carson wasn’t certain what he was doing, but it was keeping the invaders out of the medlab’s section. The other scientists were ransacking the medlab’s emergency stores, trying to put together things they could use for weapons, booby traps to protect the corridor. Besides Bates, only two other members of the expedition’s small military contingent had made it here; they were Marines who had been patrolling the edge of the city’s secure area and had barely made it to the lab before Radek had had to seal the corridor. Carson was badly afraid that the others were lying dead in the ’gate room, where the attack had begun. “Security codes,” he said, mostly to himself. “You don’t think this Dorane got them out of Rodney or Sheppard somehow?” He didn’t feel particularly hopeful; it might mean the story about the Wraith was so much rubbish, but it didn’t mean that Dorane hadn’t killed both men.
Radek winced, but before he could answer, the Atlantean com system clicked on and Carson heard a woman’s voice saying, “—try it now, it should be through to the medlab—”
Startled and hopeful, Radek said, “Dr. Simpson, is that you?”
But it was Elizabeth’s voice that replied, “This is Weir—”
Carson asked urgently, “Elizabeth, are you all right?”
Then Bates pushed in from the other bay, cutting through the confusion to demand, “Dr. Weir, what’s your situation?”
Elizabeth’s voice was rushed but calm. “I’m in the small science meeting room below the operations level, with Simpson and some of the operations staff. Simpson’s managed to keep them from getting the door open.” She took a sharp breath. “It was Dorane. Sending the jumpers back to the repository was a trap. And he’s done something to our people. Ford, Teyla, Kavanagh, and the two jumper crews who came back with the aliens are obeying him like robots, like they were under some kind of mental control. They captured the ’gate room before we even knew the aliens were here. I don’t know how he’s—”
The com cut off. “Dr. Weir!” Bates shouted. There was no response.
“My God,” Radek muttered into the sudden silence, sounding horrified. “That explains the codes. If he is controlling our people…”
Bates’ face could have been carved from stone. He turned to Carson, asking, “Do you know what would cause that?”
“Son, I don’t have a bloody clue.” He wondered if the man could handle this. He had briefly wondered the same thing about Sheppard, until the Major had taken a team to a hive ship and brought all their missing people back, except for Colonel Sumner and one of the Athosians. After that, Carson hadn’t wondered. And he knew Bates could be something of a bastard, but no one in his right mind would want Sheppard’s job, and Bates certainly didn’t look as if he wanted it now. He explained, “I need data, something to work with. If we could get one of the affected people down here—”