Secrets

Chapter Two Down

The cessation of sound was almost painful. Rodney untangled himself from the control panel, wincing. His wrist hurt, and his hip and knee, sharp pains already fading as he moved, his body healing itself. Something to be grateful for, he knew, but his feeding hand throbbed a warning. He clenched his fingers over the hand-mouth and turned his attention to the central console. Behind him he could hear Ronon moving, struggling to his feet, but he ignored him, concentrating on the flickering display. It had been damaged in the landing, and he hoped it was just the screen. He reached for the keyboard, jerked back as something failed, spitting sparks and then a more definite flame. He slapped at it with his off hand, beat them down, and squinted at the failing display. They’d landed well, not too far from the Stargate — well, far was a relative term, he thought, converting Wraith units to kilometers, but it was a distance they could reasonably expect to walk. Fifty kilometers was something they could manage, and he wasn’t going to think about what would happen if Jennifer didn’t regain consciousness —

The display steadied under his touch, instructions spilling down the screen. He followed them, touching keys to transfer data to a portable device, deactivating the claws that held the hatch closed. There was a heavy click and a hiss, and a crack appeared in the hitherto seamless hull.

“Nice, McKay,” Ronon said.

Rodney ignored him, watching the screen, the power fading even as he typed. “No, no, don’t — crap.”

The display was dead, the last of the lifepod’s power spent transferring the systems’ data into the handheld device. Rodney pulled it from its dock, slipped it into his pocket.

Ronon pushed past him, braced himself against the frame of the hull, used feet and shoulders to shove the hatch fully open. Air rushed in, sweet with something that made Rodney brace himself, expecting to sneeze, and Ronon tipped his head back.

“OK,” he said. “This looks — safe enough.”

Rodney turned toward him and Ronon recoiled, the blaster coming up.

“Would you stop that?” Rodney asked. “Hello? Rodney McKay? Remember me?”

“You’re also a Wraith,” Ronon said, but after a moment he slipped his blaster into its holster. “And if you make one wrong move, toward me or Jennifer, I will kill you.”

Rodney opened his mouth to protest, but his own memories stopped him. He had fed — through intermediaries, yes, Dust and then Ember feeding him like a child, but it was still feeding. People had died because of him. He shoved that thought away, too, and fixed Ronon with what he hoped was his most sincere gaze. “It’s me,” he said, softly. “Ronon, I —” He shook his head, unable to find the words, and, anyway, there wasn’t likely to be much of anything that would convince Ronon. “Let’s get Jennifer out of here, and see what we’ve got.”

“We’ll check out the area first,” Ronon said, and dropped the half meter from the hatch to the yielding ground.

Rodney glanced back at Jennifer, still held safely in the niche, and Ronon glared at him from the open hatch. “Come on, McKay.”

Rodney sighed, and scrambled out of the lifepod. They had landed among trees, and the air was filled with the scent of broken branches. That was the sweetness that he had smelled, almost like maple sugar, and for an instant he was overcome by a sense of deja vu. These trees could have been Canadian, the heavy conifers of the northwestern provinces: it would be fall there, golden leaves showing among the dark green of the pines. Madison would be starting school, and Jeannie would be finishing up that year’s hats and mittens, readying them all for the winter to come.

He glanced down, seeing his own hands green and misshapen, the heavy vein twining around his feeding hand. There would be no going back, not if he stayed like this — and he would not. Carson would find a way. Carson and Jennifer would find a way to reverse the process, and to that end, they needed to find the best way to the Stargate. He fumbled for the device in his pocket, keyed it on and let the screen fill with data. Fifty kilometers from the Stargate — really, not bad under the circumstances — and in a direction that the device called eight points north of northeast.

“Ronon!”

“Yeah?” The big man turned back to face him, the blaster loose in his hand.

“I’ve got a fix on the Stargate.” Rodney pointed into the trees. “That way. Fifty kilometers.”

There was a pause while Ronon converted that into some unit of his own. “OK. What else does that thing do?”

“What?”

“Lifesigns?” Ronon asked. “Humans, Wraith, large carnivores?”

“Oh.” Rodney touched the controls, found the local sensors. “Nothing in the immediate vicinity. And the scan from orbit didn’t show any signs of human habitation. Or Wraith landing sites.”

Ronon nodded thoughtfully. “And I don’t see any indication of big animals. Just little ones. I think it’s safe to set up camp and see what we can do for Jennifer.”

“You’re sure you don’t know what happened to her?”

“I told you what happened,” Ronon said. “I don’t know why.”

Rodney made a face, and turned back to the lifepod.

“McKay.” Ronon fixed him with a look. “I’ll carry Jennifer. You see what’s in there that we can use.”

Rodney bit back his first response, and stood aside as Ronon climbed back into the pod. He reappeared a moment later, Jennifer cradled in his arms. Her hair had come down from its severe ponytail, fell in a curve across her cheek. Her head was tucked against Ronon’s chest, as though she slept, and her arms were folded at her waist. Rodney looked away as Ronon jumped lightly down — Jennifer never moved — and pulled himself back into the cooling pod.

There were no emergency rations, of course, or a first aid kit: a stranded Wraith would either heal himself and feed, or die. He rummaged in the storage compartments beneath and beside the niche, found a set of empty clips that should have held a stunner. The Old One will hear about that, he thought, and only then remembered he was no longer Quicksilver.

In the next compartment, though, he found a folded shelter, an all-purpose carrier that was probably watertight, and a thick metal rod that could be extended to form a walking stick, with prongs that folded out to make a trident, and a narrow shovel-like blade concealed in the opposite end. He refolded it, and climbed back out of the pod.

Ronon had laid Jennifer down in the shade of one of the sweet-smelling pines, propping her back against the smooth bark, and was busy gathering stones to surround the bare circle he’d made in the grass. He straightened at Rodney’s approach, and Rodney held up the shelter.

“It’s a tent,” he said. “Well, sort of. See, there are pockets in the corner —”

“I know how it works,” Ronon said. “We need wood. For a fire. And something to carry water in.”

“I’ve got that,” Rodney said, and flourished the carrier.

“Good.” Ronon reached for his knife, began sawing at a nearby sapling.

“You want me to find water?” Rodney asked. “I mean, I kind of failed completely at the whole Boy Scout thing.”

“You can hear it,” Ronon said. “There’s a stream, that way.”

Rodney tilted his head to listen. Sure enough, once he paid attention, he could hear the sound of water running over stones. “How do you know it’s safe?” Ronon gave him a look, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “OK, OK, but don’t blame me if you get some Pegasus Galaxy version of giardia.”

He made his way into the trees, over ground carpeted in years of fallen needles. They were springy underfoot, and gave off a fainter sweetness; something fluttered past, vivid blue against the green, a large insect, or a tiny bird. It was all very quiet, except for the sound of the water.

Ronon was not going to leave him alone with Jennifer. That was obvious, and not entirely unexpected, and it hurt more than he would have believed. For God’s sake, I’m Rodney McKay. I’m the man you’ve been looking for, at least I assume you’ve been looking for me, for the last three months. And now that you’ve found me, you’re going to treat me like a Wraith?

He reached the edge of the stream, the water loud over a bed of fist-sized pebbles. He flipped the carrier to its spherical form, and knelt on the bank, the skirts of his coat spreading around him. He dipped the carrier into the water, and his distorted reflection looked back at him: white hair, too short for beauty, Quicksilver’s despair; yellow eyes and pale green skin and the long sensor pits outside each nostril. Ronon of all people wouldn’t be able to see past that. Probably nobody would, except maybe Jennifer and Carson. They understood what had been done to him, they’d have an answer. His feeding hand throbbed again, the first pangs of serious hunger, and he flattened it against his coat. They would be back to the Stargate in a day or two or three, and everything would be all right.

By the time he made it back to the clearing, Ronon had put up the Wraith shelter, twisting and staking the multi-pocketed fabric to make a three-sided lean-to, and started a small fire in the ring of stones. He had collected grass and leaves for a cushion, too, and Jennifer lay curled on her side, still apparently asleep. He looked up sharply at Rodney’s approach, one hand starting toward his blaster, but then controlled himself.

“I got water,” Rodney said. “And the stream looked clear enough, though of course that’s not something you can tell by looking.”

There was a sound from the shelter, the familiar snort and whuffle that Jennifer made on waking. Rodney caught his breath, shocked by the relief that flooded through him, and Ronon slid toward her.

“Jennifer?” he said. “Easy.”

Jennifer’s eyes opened, gaze vague and unfocussed, and then sharpening as she came fully to herself. “What — where?” She sat up, shaking her head, and Rodney cringed as she met his eyes. He saw her face change, shock, fear, and last of all recognition. “Rodney?”

“It’s me,” he said. He wanted desperately to take her hand, but he knew Ronon would stop him. “It’s really me.”

“Rodney,” she said, relief and acceptance in her voice, and started to push herself to her knees.

“Easy,” Ronon said again, and she fell back, shaking her head.

“OK, that’s — weird, but I think I’m OK. But we got Rodney back, right? That’s the main thing.”

Ronon gave a sideways smile, and sat back on his heels.

Rodney said, “It’s a start. And, believe me, I’m grateful! But we have crash-landed — well, lifepod-landed, which isn’t exactly the same thing — on an uninhabited planet, so we’re not, and I say this with a painful awareness of the pun, out of the woods just yet.”

Jennifer looked at Ronon. “Really?”

“You know McKay,” Ronon began. He paused. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Jennifer leaned back against the nearest tree, watching as Ronon tended the fire and Rodney — yes, Rodney, despite the green skin and claws and the feeding hand he was trying to keep out of sight — grumbled and complained. Her head wasn’t spinning any more, and there was none of the weird tunnel vision she had experienced on the hive ship. She pressed her fingers against her neck, her pulse steady to the touch; her skin was dry and cool, no hint of fever and none of the cold sweat of nausea. In fact, she felt entirely normal.

“What happened?” she asked, and Ronon sat back on his heels.

“Don’t ask me,” Rodney said. “Chewbacca there knocked me out before whatever it was happened to you.”

“You passed out,” Ronon said. “I don’t know why.”

Jennifer shook her head, trying to remember. OK, the last thing she was sure of was being on the hive, following Ronon down the dark organic corridors, her head swimming, stomach roiling. Nerves, she’d thought at first, and then she hadn’t known what it was. Ronon had waved her back, broken through into the labs — and then she remembered Rodney, sprawled on the floor. She’d injected him with the sedative, that had been the plan, and then — She shook her head again. After that, nothing, until she woke here, feeling only as though she’d slept badly.

“OK,” she said. “Yes. I remember the hive. And feeling bad.”

“How are you feeling now?” Rodney asked. He was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, his hands resting on his knees. She could see the heavy claws, the thick vein that wound around the forefinger of his left hand, and knew without having to see it that the palm was crossed by the handmouth, his fingers curved to hide the fleshy ridges of the feeding organ. She shuddered in spite of herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen.

“All right, I think,” she said. She paused, assessing. “Everything feels normal.”

“So why’d you pass out?” Ronon asked.

“I don’t —” Jennifer stopped, considering. OK, what was behind her reaction? She’d been in good health before they started; the only thing that was at all out of the ordinary was the retrovirus, but she had taken that days before, and it had had no effect. Or had it? She had calculated that any effects would show themselves within thirty-six hours of the injection, but if she’d been wrong… She said, slowly, “It might have been the retrovirus. It didn’t do that before, but — this was a different formulation.”

Ronon scowled. He hadn’t liked the idea in the first place, and he looked as though he was having a hard time not telling her so.

Rodney said, “What retrovirus? Why are you testing things on yourself, anyway?”

“Because I couldn’t ethically test it on anybody else,” Jennifer snapped.

“It’s one of Todd’s bright ideas,” Ronon said.

“Not entirely,” Jennifer said. She looked at Rodney, green-skinned, white-haired, his slit pupils narrowed to a thread against even the filtered sunlight of the clearing. If she hadn’t known him before, she would not have recognized him as anything but Wraith, hunched there in his black coat like a crow on a branch. “We, Carson and I, have been working on a treatment that would counteract the effects of Wraith feeding — that would allow a human to survive being fed on. As Ronon said, Todd has also been working on the same idea, and, well, we ended up pooling our knowledge.”

“You and Todd,” Rodney said slowly. To Jennifer’s surprise, he began to laugh. “Of course he did! It must be at least a quintuple cross by now! No wonder Ember was scared to death the whole time.”

“Ember?” Ronon said.

“One of Guide’s — Todd’s — clevermen.” Rodney paused, as though he’d just realized he was translating Wraith terms. “Scientists. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was involved in developing it, it’s his kind of project.” He shook his head. “But that isn’t really relevant. So you tried this retrovirus yourself?”

Jennifer felt herself flush. “Yes. Look, after I let Todd feed on me the first time, I couldn’t let anybody else do it.”

“You let Todd feed on you?” Rodney’s voice scaled up, and Ronon gave a sympathetic grunt.

“You’ve missed a lot of fun, McKay.”

“Yes, I let him feed on me,” Jennifer said. “Somebody had to test it, and I trusted that he would revive me if the virus didn’t work. Which it didn’t, the first time, and he did.”

“You let Todd feed on you,” Rodney said again, more quietly, this time. “And restore you. Did you have any idea of the risk you were running?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” Jennifer glared back at him. “And I still do. And you may be grateful for it in the long run.”

Rodney winced at that, and Jennifer bit her lip. That wasn’t something she’d meant to say, at least not yet. She didn’t really want to know if Rodney had fed, though he must have done, to stay alive this long.

Ronon said, “So you think you passed out because of the retrovirus?”

Jennifer took a breath. “Yes. At least, that seems the most likely cause. There’s nothing else that was different.”

“Does that mean it worked?” Ronon’s expression was unreadable.

“I don’t know.” Jennifer couldn’t look at Rodney, looked at her hands instead. “I won’t know until we can test it.”

“Well, I’m not going to test it,” Rodney said. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Damn right it’s not,” Ronon said.

“Rodney.” Jennifer laced her fingers together. She couldn’t come right out and say it, couldn’t ask him when he’d last fed — couldn’t bear to think about it, Rodney with teeth bared, his claws, his handmouth fixed on someone’s chest. “Look, I’m going to need to examine you, to find out what they did to make you change.”

“If I’d known you were coming,” Rodney said, “I’d’ve stolen a dose of the drug they were giving me. At least, I assume that’s what it was, something to keep me — I don’t know, wraithified. But, no, you had to stun me first.”

“That’s because you tried to kill us the last time,” Ronon said.

Jennifer closed her eyes for a moment. “I can probably get an idea of what they were doing from a blood sample, but not here. Though it’s actually good news that this process requires a booster, that means it ought to just wear off, more or less.” Except that all their simulations showed that it didn’t wear off entirely, that Rodney would be stuck halfway, partly Wraith and partly human, just like Michael. She shoved that thought aside. “So. Do we have a plan for getting back to Atlantis?”

“Yeah.” Ronon pushed himself to his feet, began collecting more scraps of fallen wood. “McKay says we’re about fifty kilometers from the Stargate, and the terrain’s not much different than here. I figure we can walk that in two days, three at the most.” He squinted at the sky. “I’m guessing it’ll be dark in a few hours, so there’s no point in getting started today. I say we get a good night’s sleep here, and start for the gate first thing in the morning.”

“OK.” Jennifer reached into her pockets, began taking stock of what she found. There was no sign of her P90, she realized, and guessed it had been left on the hive. Basic first aid kit, a case with a second dose of Wraith-level tranquilizer — they weren’t likely to need that unless something went drastically wrong — three, no, four power bars, plus a multi-tool. She checked the last pocket. Two more power bars and a crinkly mylar emergency blanket still in its wrapper. A twist of string, and three spare elastics for her hair.

“You’ve been taking lessons from Teyla,” Ronon said, with approval. He dropped another load of wood beside the fire.

“It seemed like a good idea,” Jennifer began, and made herself stop. “Thank you.”

“If you don’t mind sharing,” Ronon said, “that’ll get us through tonight and still leave some to spare. I’ll set snares overnight. From the tracks, there’s plenty of small game.”

“Couldn’t we just, I don’t know, find fruits and berries?” Jennifer asked.

“Sometimes they pick up weird trace minerals,” Ronon said. “It’s not so bad with animals.” He pointed to one of the elastics. “Can I use that?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Jennifer watched as he twisted it around a thin, flexible stick — making a snare, she guessed.

“We’ll need to split the watches, you and I,” he said, and Rodney lifted his head.

“Hello? What about me?”

“You’re what we’re watching,” Ronon said. “If you weren’t you, I’d tie you up overnight. Or stun you.”

Rodney opened his mouth to protest, closed it again, a look almost of misery flickering across his face, before he bared teeth in a snarl that did nothing to reassure anyone. “Fine. Be that way.”

Jennifer closed her eyes again. Somehow she’d imagined that when they finally found Rodney it would just be a matter of getting him into the infirmary, that it was just a medical problem, the kind of thing that, while admittedly difficult, she knew how to handle. She had no idea what to do about Ronon, about Rodney as a Wraith, about Rodney and Ronon together or anything else that involved interpersonal relations. They were all professionals, she told herself. More than that, they were a team. Rodney and Ronon were teammates, they were friends, and somehow that would be enough to get them to the Stargate. Surely.