And it was quiet. John went still, listening intently. No whispers, no alien sound that his brain tried to interpret as music, no white noise. Everything he could hear was homey and familiar: the distant crash of waves washing against the city’s platforms, clicking keys as someone typed, hums and beeps from medical equipment both Ancient and Earth-built. The only voices came from further away in the medlab, and were human. He felt his ear cautiously, then ran a hand through his hair. No spines.
John cleared his throat and said, “Beckett?”
Beckett looked up, brows lifted, then said something to one of the techs as he pushed his chair back. He came over to stand beside John’s bed, pulling a portable scanner out of the pocket of his lab coat. “Ah, Major. Are we coherent today?”
“Is that a trick question?” He squinted up at Beckett. “How long have I been out?”
“Six days,” Beckett said, seeming surprised and pleased. Apparently asking if John was coherent hadn’t been a joke. Beckett set the scanner aside and took out a small pocket flashlight. “Hold still a moment and let me check your eyes.”
Expecting to hear that it had been a day or so at most, John was too floored to try to avoid the light. But it was a relief when it just stung a little and didn’t make him want to punch Beckett and throw himself off the bed. Beckett confirmed it, picking up the chart and making a note. “Very good. I think your eyes are quite back to normal.”
“How is everybody?” John didn’t need to ask if he was still dying; he knew what Beckett looked like when people were dying, and this wasn’t it. “Teyla and Ford, everybody who had the mind-control drug—”
“Everyone who was given the drug has completely recovered,” Beckett assured him. “And poor Masterson was the only death from the fighting. There were a number of injuries from the fighting, but everyone’s doing fine now.”
John pushed himself up a little more. “Hey, I can’t hear the ATA anymore. Does that mean…?”
Carson pushed him back down again. “Yes, all physical symptoms are gone. You had us worried for a bit there. We got you on life support just as your body was in the process of shutting down. But that memory core of Zelenka’s had a good deal of information on the various genetic treatments and how to tweak them back to normal for humans and for the Ancients. They did have to pop back to the planet to pick up that download Rodney took from the bastard’s database to figure out exactly what you were given, but once we had that, I was able to start reversing the process.”
John let his head drop back on the pillow. He wasn’t as stiff and sore as he should be, though he could tell he really needed to shave. “I don’t feel like I’ve been unconscious for a week.”
“Oh, you haven’t been unconscious for the past few days,” Beckett said, making some more notes. “We were able to get you up and walking around. But the Ancient genetic treatments had a bit of a side effect in humans that apparently made you extremely, shall we say, loopy, so I doubt you remember any of that.”
“Okay. That’s…weird.” He tentatively flexed his hands, feeling a little residual soreness. “So what happened with the claws? Did they just fall out during all this?”
“Oh, that. No, that took a wee spot of surgery.” John frowned. Beckett tended to pull out the “wee” bit when he was flustered or trying to be reassuring. It was always only a “wee” seizure, a “wee” dose of radiation, a “wee” chunk of shrapnel in your abdomen. Beckett continued briskly, “But don’t worry about it. I did it when I first initiated the other treatments, so your nails would have time to start growing back before you recovered.”
“Oh.” John suspected he was glad he didn’t remember that. And he kept thinking of things he wanted to know more about. “Did Zelenka figure out what was on the memory core that Dorane was so desperate to get?”
“It was his cure, Major.” Beckett’s face turned grim. “Apparently the Ancients needed antidotes for the victims rescued from the repository, and they needed them fast. So they infected the bastard with a few altered strains of his own retrovirus. It was triggered by the altered version of the ATA that he created, or the absence of it. He couldn’t leave the repository for more than a day or so without the full effect setting in, and killing him.” Beckett lifted his brows. “They made a deal with him that if he produced the information they needed, they would give him the specifics of what they had done to him, so he could develop his own cure. He fulfilled his part of the bargain, but they were still trying to decide what to do with him as a permanent solution. There’s no more information on the core. Rodney suspects they were fully occupied by the Wraith at that point and just let nature take its course at the repository. But the recording did have the specifics for the strains of the retrovirus they used.”
He did say it was a punishment, John thought, considering it. “I would have just shot him,” he said finally.
“I’m not a violent man, but it would have saved a lot of trouble,” Beckett admitted.
John had more questions, but Beckett distracted him with an examination that involved multiple scanners, the Ancient MRI machine, and questions about how it felt to be poked in various places. John ended up falling asleep again when they were changing out the IVs.
John felt a lot more awake by the next day, and while taking the bandages off his hands, Dr. Biro filled in some more details for him about the past week.
Sergeant Stackhouse, returned safely from his trading mission, had taken a large and heavily armed team back into the repository three days ago. They had recovered Kolesnikova’s and Boerne’s bodies, and also let McKay do a brief survey of Dorane’s labs. Now that McKay knew what he was looking for, he was able to distinguish between Dorane’s altered gene technology and the real ATA. He had concluded in disgust that most of the equipment that might have been useful in Atlantis was too tainted with the altered gene to risk using. They had taken the drained ZPMs on the chance that some day McKay might figure out how the things were recharged, collected as many spent cartridges as they could so the techs could use them for making new ammo, and managed to salvage Ford’s P-90 and John’s tac vest from the wreckage the Koan had made of their supplies and equipment. Then they had planted C-4 in several strategic locations and blown up the labs.
Biro also told him that Dorane had never had a chance to send jumpers to the mainland for the Athosians, so they had fortunately missed the whole thing. Teyla was out there now, letting them know what had happened, or what had almost happened.
John had also missed the memorial services for Dr. Kolesnikova, Boerne, and Masterson, the Marine who had been killed in the ’gate room.
McKay stopped by later, either out of genuine concern or because he heard John was getting solid food for breakfast, or more probably a combination of both. This actually worked out for the best, since John could handle most of what the medlab considered food, but he didn’t even want to be in the same room with the powdered eggs, and McKay was a convenient means of disposal.
Tucking into the yellow egg mush, McKay told him a lot more about John’s initial treatment and recovery than Beckett or Biro had. The first few days had been much worse than any of the medical staff had implied. The way McKay described it, it had been all out war: Carson Beckett, Earth’s foremost xenobiologist and the man who had invented the ATA gene therapy, against Dorane, the Dr. Mengele of the Pegasus Galaxy. The first day Beckett had just struggled to keep John alive, while Zelenka had hurried to finish reconstructing the damaged portion of the memory core and McKay had set up a copy of Dorane’s database to get Beckett the information he needed. About midway through the third day Beckett had managed to produce the right drugs, and the lab mice he had tested them on had mostly survived, so he had started John on the full treatment. By that night John was breathing on his own again and the antennae spines had started to fall out, and Beckett had collapsed in the next bed over and snored for eight hours.