“Oh, for —” Rodney broke off, looking pinched and miserable.
“There won’t be,” Jennifer said, but she took the blaster. “Thank you.”
“If there is,” Ronon began, and stopped, knowing it was pointless. “Don’t hesitate,” he said at last, and turned away.
Rodney rested his head against the bole of the tree, and closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at Jennifer turning Ronon’s blaster over and over in her hands. Somehow this was not what he’d expected from a rescue. First of all, he’d assumed they’d pull it off neatly, and that he’d be back on Atlantis, safe in the infirmary while Jennifer and Carson figured out how to reverse the transformation. Though, given the way missions usually turned out, that was probably too much to expect. He’d lost track of how many plans had gone wildly wrong, starting the first day they walked through the gate. So being stranded on a strange planet three days from the Stargate was probably just more of the same. And he’d expected that the whole team would be there, John and Teyla, and probably a couple of squads of Marines — they’d brought in the heavy guns when Teyla was missing, after all. And, most of all, most painfully of all, for some reason he’d thought that if Jennifer had come to his rescue that somehow it might end up like the movies, Jennifer in his arms promising everything would be all right. He could almost smell the faint clean scent of her hair pressed against his lips, her skin giving way under his claws as he fed —
He jerked upright, appalled by the thought, by the pulsing hunger, closed his feeding hand painfully tight over the handmouth. Jennifer gave him a wary glance.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” Rodney answered. It was true enough, though not the whole truth. He felt — lost, alien in this body, caught up in instincts he still didn’t completely understand. It wasn’t that he couldn’t control himself, of course he could; it was more that the lines were blurring, Rodney McKay and Quicksilver, Atlantis’s cleverman and Death’s scientist. Jennifer was still looking at him, and he made himself smile, hoping it was more than a baring of teeth. “Lightheaded. Which, you know, really isn’t that surprising —”
“How long can a Wraith go without feeding?” Jennifer asked. Her voice was still remote, too controlled, and suddenly Rodney wanted nothing more than to smash that calm, to drive her into his arms.
“I have no idea. They made me think I was one of them, just the way we did with Michael, which, by the way, was an even more stunningly bad idea than we thought it was at the time, so they weren’t exactly telling me things that I was supposed to already know. It all depends, whether you were well fed to start with, whether you have to heal, or if you’re exerting yourself — maybe even your genetic heritage. There’s no single factor! It’s all completely individual.”
“And you last fed — a month ago, you said?”
Rodney stopped, his anger too hard to sustain. “About then, yes. Look, Jennifer — I didn’t feed myself.” That seemed important, something she needed to believe. “They fed me, first Dust, and then Ember — they were the clevermen who took care of me, who — managed — me. I mean, I know it’s — people are still dead, but —”
He stopped, unable to go on, and Jennifer gave him a wincing smile. “Oh, Rodney. I’m so sorry.”
That was something, though he would have liked the touch of her hand. “I’m all right,” he said. “I can make it to the Stargate.”
“You know,” Jennifer said. “Um, I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s not a good thing,” Rodney said. “Thinking, on a mission — that’s usually a bad sign.”
She smiled, but abstractedly, and worked Ronon’s blaster into the front of her jacket. The butt protruded at an awkward angle, but it left her with both hands free. “Carson and I have been doing a lot of work toward getting you back to normal. We’ve made good progress, and in the process, we’ve learned a lot more about Wraith physiology. And about how Wraith feed, what actually happens —” She fiddled with the zipper of the jacket, holding the blaster more securely. “That’s part of how we developed the retrovirus, you know? Well, that, and working with Todd. He was working on something like it already.” She took a deep breath. “My point is, I think this version of the retrovirus works. It worked in simulation, and I think it will work now, so I think it’s time —”
“Oh, no,” Rodney said. “Absolutely not. No, no, no, that’s a terrible idea —”
“The transformation is — in all our simulations, it’s a strenuous process,” Jennifer said. “It puts an enormous strain on the system. And you’re hungry already.”
“Hungry,” Rodney said. “Not starving.” He hoped it was true.
“You — we may need to test the virus,” Jennifer said. Her voice was perfectly steady. “We need to get you back to Atlantis in as good shape as possible.”
“No,” Rodney said again. “Jennifer —” He stopped, shaking his head. “OK, hypothetically, I see your point. And, maybe, once we’re back in Atlantis, if there are no other options, then, OK, yes, we could maybe have to revisit this. But not now. Not here. If anything goes wrong —”
“You are changing,” Jennifer said softly. “You may need to feed while you still can.”
“Ronon says we’re only one more day from the Stargate,” Rodney said. “One more day.” He held up his feeding hand, felt the mouth throb with his heartbeat, with the pulse of his hunger. “I’m still — I haven’t changed that much. Not enough to matter.” The words were bitter on his tongue.
Her mouth thinned, but she nodded reluctantly. “OK,” she said. “One more day.”
Chapter Five
Proving Ground
“What do you mean, you don’t know where they are?” Sheppard’s hands were balled into fists at his sides, and behind him Radek Zelenka was frowning deeply. Cadman just looked uncomfortable.
“I thought you had them!” Sam said incredulously. “You radioed from the hive ship. I thought you said that you had them.”
“I said I didn’t have them!” Sheppard replied. “I thought you had them. The plan was that you were supposed to beam them out!”
“I couldn’t get in range,” Sam said. “I was trying to, and I thought you said that you were on the hive ship with Ronon and Keller and Teyla.” She looked around the gateroom. “And where is Teyla anyway?”
“With Todd,” John said. “She needed to finish up some stuff. She’ll be back tomorrow. What about Rodney?”
Sam took a deep breath. “I don’t know. The hive ship blew. That’s all I know. Our shields were down completely and we had to get out ahead of the shockwave. We barely got our 302s on board in time.” Rodney was probably dead. But that had been the math all along — less and less likely he’d survive this. But Ronon and Dr. Keller… “If we’d stayed…”
Sheppard’s face was grim. “If you’d stayed with no shields you’d have lost the ship and all aboard.”
He knew the math too. The whole crew of the Hammond, a hundred and eight lives against three, Ronon, Keller, and Rodney. And yet. It was always easier from the other side, Sam thought, one of the team at risk rather than the ones who had to write them off. But she’d been written off again and again, and she was still here.
“They might have gotten out of there somehow,” Sam said. “There were Wraith ships all over the place. If they’d stolen a ship…” She’d done it that way once with a Death Glider. Of course, they’d nearly run out of air in a decaying high Earth orbit before they were picked up.