“It explains why he wanted to kill you at first sight,” McKay added. “As opposed to the usual reasons why people want to kill you at first sight.”
John sat up, admitting reluctantly, “Okay, it does explain that. Is there anything else on the recording?”
“No, it fuzzes out right after this.” Rodney frowned at the screen. “I think he must have blown up the camera with his mind, or something.”
John looked at the screen again, wondering at the motives of those people, so long dead. Or Ascended, or whatever. Maybe part of Dorane’s desire for revenge had come from the fact that the Ancients had left him to rot in the repository. Faced with the Wraith advance, they had just filed him away as not important enough to bother with. Unless making it clear to Dorane that he was a minor irritant at best had been some Ancient’s idea of the ultimate punishment. Considering the effect it had evidently had on him, it just might have been.
John left Rodney and Teyla still searching through the few damaged images from the core’s display. It was time to stop avoiding this.
He went up to the jumper bay. It was quiet and unoccupied, which was perfect. He wanted to do this alone, just in case Beckett was wrong. Half the expedition either didn’t have the Ancient gene or the ATA therapy, and losing it wouldn’t mean he couldn’t do his job. But it would mean he couldn’t fly the jumpers. If they weren’t able to contact Earth, it might mean he could never fly again. It would mean a lot of things he wasn’t willing to give up.
He picked Jumper One for luck; it was the one he had first tried to fly, the one that had gotten him to the hive ship and back when he had barely known what he was doing with it.
But when he stepped into the cockpit and sat down, it happily powered up, adjusted the seat and the lighting for him, popped up several sensor screens when he thought about them and then tried to hand him a life sign detector. It was in its way as big a relief as Jumper Five carrying the bioweapon away through the gate; Atlantis still knew him, and everything was all right.