Jo Graham - Secrets

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.”

“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.

Sheppard’s face looked gray. “Ronon’s good,” he said. “He’d do something. We’ve got to get back and search the debris field.”

“As soon as the Hammond has shields again, we’ll do that,” Sam said. She made her voice hard. “But I can’t jump into a Wraith held system with no shields. Right now we’re working around the clock on the repairs.”

Sheppard swallowed. For a moment Sam thought he was going to protest, but he didn’t. “I know,” he said, and from Sheppard that was a concession of almost unimaginable trust. He knew she’d do her best.

And she would. “I’ll go see how the repairs are coming,” she said. “And put the priority on the shields. We may be able to get underway in a few hours.” She looked at Zelenka. “Dr. Zelenka, are you able to assist?”

“Absolutely,” Zelenka said, handing his weapon and tac vest off to Cadman. “I will help.”

“I’ll go tell Woolsey,” Sheppard said, and strode off toward Woolsey’s office. Cadman hovered uncertainly in his wake.

“You can stand down,” Sam said to Cadman. “Go clean up and report to me for debriefing in two hours. I want to hear what happened, but it can wait until you’ve had a few minutes and I’ve checked on the repairs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cadman said, looking relieved.

Sam glanced down at Radek. “Let’s go fix the Hammond .”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Again.”

“Somehow it never stays fixed.”

Laura Cadman, clean and smelling like Satsuma shower gel rather than hive ship, found Colonel Carter upside down in the crawl space on deck E. “You asked me to report in two hours, ma’am,” she said to her colonel’s rear end. Carter was lying over a strut working on something beneath it, occasionally bumping heads with Dr. Kusanagi, who was also upside down on the other side of the hole.