“Right.” But as McKay took her other arm, Teyla twitched and opened her eyes. McKay grimaced and muttered, “Uh oh,” but her expression was bewildered and frightened.
John leaned over her, brushing the tangled hair out of her eyes. He was just relieved she was conscious. “Teyla, it’s us, Sheppard and McKay. We’ve got to get you moving, all right?”
After a moment, she nodded in relief and recognition, and they got her up off the walkway and sort of walking between them, though she had difficulty getting her legs to move. From the hard grip she had on his shoulder and the collar of McKay’s shirt, John thought she was glad to see them.
They got her off the walkway and into the corridor, John steering them away from the area near the generator room and in toward the center section of the city. He wanted desperately to know what was going on in the operations tower, to find out if Bates had released the prisoners yet and how close he was to — John halted suddenly, making Teyla and McKay stumble. In the floor below his feet, radiating out of the walls, he felt the ATA rushing back to life and awareness, a dull roar of sound that started at the center of the city and spiraled outward. It scared the hell out of him for an instant and he couldn’t think what was causing it, if the city was about to blow up, sink into the ocean, or lift off the planet. Then the emergency lights flickered and the swell of sound dropped a little, settling into what something told him was a normal level. “I hope that’s what I think it is,” he said under his breath, waiting tensely for confirmation.
Watching him anxiously, McKay demanded, “Oh God, what now?”
The tenor of the ATA changed and John knew lights were coming on in other sections. “We’re getting full power back.” With his free hand, he dug the sunglasses out of his pocket just before the corridor lights brightened to full strength. He kept his eyes squeezed shut until he could get the glasses on. “Hopefully that means Bates took back the ’gate room and Grodin’s restarting our systems.”
“Finally,” McKay said in relief. “If we have the com back and our radio traffic isn’t jammed—”
Teyla dug her fingers into John’s shoulder. “Major,” she managed to say, her voice weak and uncertain. “I remember — He brought something with him, in the jumper. Another device…”
“Crap.” John exchanged an incredulous look with McKay. “Another controller?”
“No, a weapon.” She was struggling to get the words out, her face sheened with sweat. “He said…it would prevent Atlantis from being occupied again.”
McKay looked simultaneously frightened and outraged. “A bomb? We scanned for that, the repository didn’t have any munitions or explosive materials left, certainly nothing big enough to do more than—” He stopped suddenly, eyes widening. “Unless it’s a—”
“A biological weapon,” John finished, dragging them both into motion again. Teyla was still wearing a headset, probably because Dorane had never bothered to tell her to take it off. John took it, getting it over his ear while McKay found the base unit in the pocket of her tac vest and switched it on. “Which jumper, Teyla?”
“Five, the one…we used to bring the Koan.”
The radio crackled with static and John said, “Bates, come in, this is Sheppard. What’s your position?”
“This is Bates. We’ve retaken the ’gate room and—”
“Bates, I need you to seal off the jumper bay. We have a possible bioweapon in Jumper Five—”
John gave Bates the short version of the situation and got an acknowledgement, the radio cutting off to the sound of Bates yelling for Ramirez.
“Oh, God.” McKay was muttering under his breath, running through a list of everything horrible that could be in a biological bomb. “Dorane has to know about the city’s quarantine protocols—”.
“Yeah. He’s either got a way to turn them off or he’s got something that the city can’t stop that way.” John knew which one he was betting on. And he felt like he should have expected this. Dorane knew how many of us there were, he knows how big A Atlantis is, that there was no way he could round up all of us. And he knew we were just that dangerous. The bioweapon could have been insurance, making certain there would be no survivors left to free prisoners in the repository or to build bombs to lob through the ’gate. Or it could just render everybody helpless for collection by the Koan.
Two corridor turns further, they came to the first working transporter, the colored crystal doors sliding obediently open as soon as they came within range. They got Teyla inside, and the destination console with its map of the active transporters opened for John with a roar of white noise. He realized he hadn’t heard the ATA as music for a long time, even as weird alien not-quite-music. He hit the location for the transporter in the operations tower, nearest the ’gate room.
The trip took less than a heartbeat, but the transporter and everything else dissolved into an intense burst of agony. As the doors opened John pitched out and rolled around on the floor, clutching his head, holding in a scream. Finally the pain faded enough that he realized McKay was kneeling beside him, snarling at someone, “It’s killing him, what the hell do you think?”
“Rodney, shut up,” John grated out. He could taste blood at the back of his throat. He told himself, your brain isn’t actually leaking out of your ears; it just feels like it. He managed to get his eyes open and the bright light stabbed through his head; he didn’t remember losing the sunglasses.
He didn’t know why this was a shock; he had known it was getting progressively worse, that it wasn’t going to stop, that he was going to get more and more sensitive to the ATA until it finally killed him. Somehow part of him just hadn’t believed it until now. Going through the ’gate would probably make my head explode. Not that that was going to be a problem. He heard Rodney order someone to find Beckett, and John managed to say evenly, “Tell them we need the hazmat gear up here now.”
“And a medical team,” Rodney added, and then in frustration, “Why the hell didn’t you say that would happen? We didn’t have to use the transporter—”
Assuming this was directed at him, John interrupted, “I didn’t know that would happen!” Somebody put the glasses back in his hand, and he managed to get them on and get his eyes open again.
McKay was kneeling on one side of him, Bates on the other. Bates had one of the Wraith stunners slung across his back, the curved alien shape of the weapon contrasting oddly with the business-like P-90 clipped around his neck. Past them John could see some of the operations staff who must have been released from the level below, all of them startled and battered and generally traumatized. Peter Grodin was supporting Teyla, both watching anxiously. John managed to focus on Bates. “Did you secure the jumper bay?”
“Negative, sir. There were armed Koan guarding the entrance when we arrived. They’re inside the bay doorway, and we can’t get a clear shot at them.” Bates actually looked a little rattled, possibly from watching John writhe around on the floor, and for once he had forgotten to make “sir” sound like an insult. But Bates was really the very last person John wanted sympathy from.
“Dorane beat us here,” Rodney added, his mouth twisted grimly. “He must have made a run for the jumper bay as soon as he realized we had the controller device.”
“Great.” John gripped McKay’s arm and struggled to his feet, trying to make it look like McKay wasn’t actually holding him up. His head was throbbing, almost drowning out the hurricane-like rise and fall of the ATA. “We’ve got control back, right? Can you open the bay doors above the ’gate room?”
McKay looked blank. “Probably. Why? Wouldn’t that—”
John turned to Bates. “Get some stun grenades and a launcher up here.” That would take out the Koan but wouldn’t harm the jumpers or set off the energy drones they were armed with.