From what John could figure, they had one asset that Dorane wouldn’t know about. “He’s got a group of our people locked in that meeting room at the end of the south hall on the lower operations level. I need you to take Audley and Ramirez and get the Wraith stunners out of the armory, then take out the men guarding the door and get our people the hell out of there. I’ll show you where the floor access is so you can get out of the medlab corridor without alerting the Koan. After that you’re on your own; I have to go back to Dorane before he gets any more suspicious than he already is.” It was there that the plan got really vague again, but he wasn’t going to mention that aloud.
Bates nodded sharply, his expression of concentrated suspicion changing briefly to relief. The Wraith used the stunners to render their prey helpless for capture and feeding; with the four stunners the expedition had managed to acquire, Bates and the others could take out the controlled Marines without harming them, and it would be quicker and far more efficient than trying to use tasers. It would still be risky, as the men under Dorane’s control would be shooting to kill, but it was the best chance they had to get out of this without a bloodbath. Bates said, “Then we take back the ’gate room.”
“That’s right.” By that point Bates would have help from the personnel liberated from the Koan, and the ’gate room was a straight shot right up the tower. Cutting off Dorane’s access to the Stargate would probably make him freaky and desperate as well as incredibly dangerous, but this was the only way they could play it. “They’re holding Grodin and Laroque in there, and there might be some others, so don’t give them time to shoot anybody. Grodin was the only one I saw who hadn’t been given the control drug. Then come after Dorane. We should be at one of the naquadah generator stations — he’s having McKay take them out for transport back to his planet. Don’t waste any shots on Dorane, he’s wearing a personal shield.”
Bates’ expression took on a new level of grim. Ramirez asked quickly, “Sir? Personal shield?”
“That Ancient thing Dr. McKay was wearing the time I shot him and threw him off the control gallery,” John told him.
“Yes, sir.” Ramirez nodded his comprehension, then realized the implications. “Uh oh.”
“Yeah.” It had been funny when they were playing ‘Captain Invulnerable’ with McKay; now it was anything but. And if the Ancients were going to make those damn things, why so few? Why not one for everybody? Sometimes the Ancients were just annoying. John wasn’t thrilled with the people who hadn’t bothered to flush the plague-spreading nanites and the Darkness creature before leaving the city, either. “By the time you get there, I’ll think of a way to take care of Dorane.”
John could see Bates suppressing a comment on that piece of optimism. Instead he said, “What about Eliza—” He corrected himself stiffly. “Dr. Weir?”
John shook his head, though it ate at him to make this decision. “He can’t get into that room, so he can’t hold them hostage; we can get them out after we take out Dorane.”
John could tell Bates saw the sense in that, though he didn’t like it either. As Bates took Audley and Ramirez aside to work out a plan of attack for the level the prisoners were on, John turned to Beckett and Zelenka again. “Look, Dorane’s going to send the Koan in here, probably when he has Rodney take out the generator for this section of the city. You need to get everybody out, get them to the lower levels, split up and hide. It’s not Atlantis he’s really after. He wants us, to experiment on.”
Beckett grimaced. “I thought it might be something like that. We’ll pack the emergency supplies and go as soon as we can.”
“Oh, and he wants the memory core from that pillar thing — that’s why he let me come down here.” John asked Zelenka, “Do you have that?”
Zelenka nodded. “Yes, I took it out to work on further, and it came with me when we evacuated the labs. There’s information there he wants?”
“Yeah. I have no idea what, but — Can you make a copy of a part that’s really damaged, something he won’t be able to read? I just need something I can hand him, something that’ll seem convincing.”
Zelenka was already moving toward an array of laptops set up on the work tables at the back of the bay. “Yes, yes, we can do this.”
Beckett rubbed his forehead wearily. “This mind-control can’t be a completely organic process. If he really based this on the ATA gene, it just doesn’t work that way. There has to be a technological component somewhere.”
“I haven’t seen him use—” John frowned. He had seen Dorane with something, when he and Teyla had caught him with the Koan. “Oh, crap. I thought he was using a life sign detector. But that was when McKay was hiding in the area; if Dorane had had a detector, he would’ve been able to send the Koan right to him.” That was why Dorane had put the thing down and walked away from it so readily. If John had had the chance to follow through on his threat to shoot Dorane’s hand off with the device in it, this whole thing would have been over in that moment. There’s a lesson in that, he told himself grimly.
Zelenka had returned and was listening thoughtfully, tapping a memory stick against his chin. “We think life sign detector works by sensing a degree of electrical activity in nervous system — that is why it doesn’t show the presence of hibernating Wraith.” He lifted his brows. “If he has altered a unit so it also broadcasts to these infected individuals and can perhaps set it to inhibit any activity that is not directly provoked by some certain cue, such as his voice — But this is all hypothetical.”
“Could you jam the hypothetical signal from the hypothetical thing?” John asked, not hopefully.
Zelenka shook his head, grimacing. “I doubt it, certainly not in limited time before he decides to order our friends to kill us. We still have not isolated the exact element the Ancient technology uses to interact with the ATA gene, and that is happening all around us, all the time.” He handed the memory stick to John. “Here is partial copy of the damaged portion of the core. It’s nothing useful, but as you said, it may keep him busy for a few moments.”
“Right, thanks.” John pocketed the little device, still thinking about the mind control. “The control box isn’t going to be Ancient tech, it’s going to be something with Dorane’s version of the gene. If we’re lucky.”
Beckett frowned. “You can hear that also?”
“It’s what made the Koan crazy. That repository sounds like…I can’t describe what it sounds like.” The constant whisper of alien noise was getting pretty loud in here now, with all the Ancient medical equipment that Beckett had managed to activate stored in this area, the devices he had figured out well enough to use safely and those he hadn’t. “I should be able to tell if he has it on him or hidden somewhere else. Maybe Atlantis’ ATA just drowned out whatever noise it was making.”
Beckett took a sharp breath. “We have to get our hands on that device, because there’s no telling how long it would take to create a counteragent to the biological side.” He lifted his brows. “Unless you could get me blood samples from a variety of victims—”
“Blood samples. Right.” John nodded earnestly. “Want me to pick up anything else while I’m out? Some groceries, your dry cleaning—”
Beckett took his arm. “I can at least take a sample from you right now.”
“Look, I don’t have a lot of time—”
“If you’d be still for two seconds I’ll have it done,” Beckett told him briskly, steering him toward a chair. Dr. Biro already had a drawer open in the nearest storage cabinet, scrambling for a hypo and collection vials. “And if I could take a sample of one of those spines—”
“Uh, no.” John sat down reluctantly, leaning away from Beckett. “What if they’re attached to my brain or something?”
“Well, then we’d best find that out, shouldn’t we?”