He didn’t answer her, on impulse slumping in the chair and avoiding her eyes like a sulky teenager. He knew he might not be able to resist trying to give her a signal of some kind, and Dorane would be watching for that. It was probably one of the reasons that he wanted this little confrontation.
“Your Major Sheppard is helping me now,” Dorane told her. He didn’t gloat, he just said it calmly, as though they were at a staff meeting talking about reassignments.
John could feel Elizabeth’s eyes boring into the side of his head. The laptop’s microphone picked up other people moving in the room, a startled murmur. John slumped a little further in the chair. He hoped she had Bates with her, and at least a couple of men from the Marine security detail. He realized his claws were out; there had to be some sort of impulse-control mechanism there that he just hadn’t mastered yet. She asked quietly, “What did you do to him?”
Dorane gestured, as if the answer was obvious. “Just a successful experiment.”
John slanted a look at her in time to see her expression harden. Behind her he could see blue-gray wall panels with silver trim, but that didn’t narrow it down enough to tell him which room it was. She asked, “Is Dr. McKay alive as well?”
“As long as he is useful.” Dorane leaned forward, sounding reasonable. “This can all be solved in a very simple way. You have something I want. If you give it to me, I will leave you in peace.”
John didn’t think there was any way Elizabeth would buy it, but just in case he looked at Dorane, brows lifted in incredulous amusement. He considered bursting into laughter but decided he should hold onto that until later.
Elizabeth smiled thinly, making it clear she was humoring Dorane. “And what would that be?”
“The memory core of the display chamber you found recently. Your people spoke to me of it, that you managed to make it play a portion of the display, and found the ’gate address for the athenaeum there. I have been to the chamber, but the memory has been removed.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Elizabeth eyed him. “Why do you want it?”
Good question, John thought, keeping the surprise off his face. He wouldn’t have guessed that the display held any information that Dorane didn’t already have.
“It contains data that is useless to you, but important to me. I’ve tried to retrieve it before. After the Lantians departed, I had to destroy two subspace power sources in order to make my crippled dialing device work, to come here searching for it. I found the display, but I thought it damaged beyond hope.”
Elizabeth’s brows drew together, and John knew she didn’t understand. He didn’t either. He came to the city just to look for the display, and when he found it was broken he didn’t trash the place, didn’t go anywhere else through the ’gate, he just gave up and went home. Okay, that…doesn’t make sense. Elizabeth asked, “If you’ve come here before, why didn’t you escape through our Stargate to another world? You could’ve taken a jumper—”
Dorane spread his hands. “Woman, escape from what? I have always been exactly where I wanted to be. I would not stay in this city for any reason; its atmosphere is inimical to me. I need to stay at my athenaeum.” He showed faint exasperation. “Now the only reason to remove the memory core was to try to read the damaged portion. Tell me which of your people would do that.”
Zelenka, John thought. He must have removed the core after they left, to keep working on it in case there were maps or structural information that they could have used. Elizabeth said, “I have no idea. No one was assigned to work on that.”
“I hate waste, but I will begin killing your people if I do not get a satisfactory answer.” Dorane regarded her steadily.
Dorane must have already asked the personnel he had under his control, who would have had no choice but to answer. But unless Zelenka had mentioned it to some of the other scientists and techs, they might not realize he had been with John and McKay when they found the thing. Except Ford. Ford knows Zelenka’s the most likely candidate. And Ford knows I know. John said, “I bet I can guess who has it.”
Dorane shifted, lifting his brows. “And?”
“And it’s Dr. Zelenka, but you already know that from questioning the others.” He tilted his head toward Benson. “I’m guessing what you really want to know is where he is.”
From the screen, Elizabeth said sharply, “John, don’t—”
Dorane motioned to Laroque, and she cut the video. He turned to face John directly.
John said, “He’s down in the medlab, keeping you out of the computer system.” Elizabeth wouldn’t have been as worried if Zelenka was holed up with her. “You’ve cut off access to Atlantis’ com system and you’re jamming our radio traffic, so they won’t know about me. I can get in there and talk them into giving me the memory core.”
Dorane lifted his brows. “I thought you said that they would no longer trust you, or consider you one of them, after your transformation?”
Crap. John hesitated for a half a heartbeat, then remembered just in time that he was supposed to be crazy and crazy people believed contradictory things all the time; he shouldn’t be trying to come up with an elaborate rationalization here. He made himself look confused, and gave Dorane his best “I said what?” expression.
It worked. Dorane’s eyes went hooded. “Very well. I suppose it will be quicker than waiting until they starve.” He leaned back in his chair. “The Koan will follow you to the first obstructed passage.”
On the control gallery, the Koan guards, who seemed more in charge here than the Atlantis personnel Dorane had under his control, let Peter Grodin untie Rodney’s hands. Squinting in the dim light, Rodney eyed him suspiciously. Kavanagh had behaved normally, or at least in a Kavanagh-like fashion, for a long period after being infected. “Why didn’t he give you the control drug?”
Grodin threw a grim look at Ford. “He wanted someone to operate the equipment up here. As far as I can tell, he can’t allow an infected individual enough initiative to perform any kind of complicated task without losing control over them. Unfortunately, ‘stand here and shoot anyone who disobeys orders’ isn’t a complicated task.”
“Well, that’s just fantastic.” Rodney sat down at one of the locked stations, rubbing his eyes. It explained why Dorane needed Rodney to disconnect the naquadah generators. He hadn’t maintained that strict control over Kavanagh initially, but the first order he must have given was for Kavanagh to forget anything out of the ordinary had happened. That kind of loose control wouldn’t work on people who were dismantling Atlantis’ power grid.
Grodin said quietly, “He tried to initialize some of the other consoles, the ones we haven’t been able to make work, but he couldn’t. Is—”
One of the Koan came and stood over them, glaring suspiciously, but after that Grodin kept trying to catch Rodney’s eye, until Rodney turned and gave him the “oh my God, will you stop that” glare. Ford, his head still bandaged from the blow Kavanagh had given him, stood nearby watching them completely without expression, like some alien pod-person replica of the real man. Rodney had no idea whether Ford would be compelled to volunteer information to Dorane or not, but he didn’t want to take the chance.
“McKay,” Grodin whispered.
“Not now,” Rodney said through gritted teeth.
Grodin persisted, “Sergeant Stackhouse’s team has been on that three-day trading mission to the Enarians. They’re due back later tonight—”
Rodney interrupted, “He’ll order you to open the force field. You won’t have to kill them.” Though if we don’t get out of this, they may not thank you for that later.
“How do you—”
“He doesn’t want them dead. That’s what, six more bodies for his experiment? Markham’s with them, so that’s one more Ancient gene carrier to torture.”