They were quickly dragged once again to the Record Keeper's office and sat in their normal chairs. The Record Keeper looked up from the pile of papers littered across her desk.
"Dr. McKay, you're going to tell me what I want to know, or you're going to watch Dr. Beckett die."
"I'm not telling you my codes," McKay reiterated.
The Record Keeper didn't move her eyes from McKay as she reached down to the left of her desk and grabbed the strap of a bag that somewhat resembled a knapsack. He watched intently as she produced a crystal-like object from it and placed it on the desk. She could detect his surprise through the façade of disinterest he was showing.
"I want to know what this is and what it is used for, and I want to know right now." The Record Keeper was insistent. If she was going to have a bargaining chip to use against Kolya, this was something she needed to know. When McKay failed to answer in a timely fashion, she once again opened the drawer of her desk and retrieved the poison and a syringe.
"Dr. Beckett won't survive another dose of poison," she said as she rolled up Beckett's sleeves once more. "Once I inject him with it he will have at most two hours to live, and given his current condition I think that is a very generous estimate"
As much as he wanted to do something save Carson's life, he couldn't allow the secrets of the ZPM to fall into the hands of Kolya. He remained silent, and then watched in horror as she injected Carson with the poison.
Suddenly, a rumble shook the room, followed quickly by a loud explosion sounding in the distance, followed by several more rounds of explosions. The Record Keeper quickly rose to her feet and sent one of the guards out for news, then returned to her chair.
"I still have a supply of the counter-agent, Dr. McKay." She spoke slowly and attentively, but Rodney would not budge. "It works very quickly, which means that it's not too late to tell me what I want to know."
The last thing Rodney wanted was to enter into a staring contest with her, but he found himself succeeding at it quite well. It must have been the stress of this life-or-death situation that gave him his bravery, because inside he was quaking and would have liked nothing more than to be able to simply run away.
Behind him, Rodney heard the click of the guard returning through the door, but was surprised to see a half dozen more Genii soldiers accompanying him. The Record Keeper rose slowly from her chair.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asked carefully.
"We have orders to take that device back into Commander Kolya's possession," one of the guards explained. "Hand it over."
With hardly a sign of movement, the guards tensed as they suddenly realized that the Record Keeper had somehow made a knife and a hand gun appear in her right and left hands, respectively. "Come and take it."
As the first soldier took a step forward, she shot him square in the chest. Before the other guards could raise their weapons, three more guards fell from gunshots to the chest. The final four guards found themselves attempting to surround a whirlwind of death at the hands of the Record Keeper, who viciously stabbed and slashed at them before they could even aim their own hand guns at her. A guard almost caught her in his sights, but she held like a shield the dying body of another guard whose neck she had gouged. She calmly raised her hand gun and put a well-placed bullet in his forehead.
The sudden violence and gore that had just assaulted his senses shocked McKay into a stunned silence as she placed the ZPM into her knapsack. He was glad that Carson had fallen into unconsciousness and hadn't had to witness the gruesome sight.
The boy messenger that Rodney had seen before appeared at her doorway again, and he was obviously bringing her news. Just as he began to whisper into her ear, a radio still laying at the side of one of the dead Genii soldiers crackled to life.
Kolya's voice sounded harsh and unforgiving. "Kalrin, do you have it?" When there was no answer, he repeated. "Kalrin, come in. Do you have the ZPM?"
The Record Keeper picked up the radio and spoke into it with an emotion in her voice that Rodney had never heard before. "Kolya, you dishonorable coward! How dare you betray me!"
"I know what you found in those files, and I know what your honor requires you to do," he explained smugly. "I simply betrayed you before you could betray me."
"If you run from me, I swear I will hunt you down and kill you very slowly." She spoke slowly, barely concealing her contempt and rage.
One more explosion resounded through the hallways of the compound. "That seems unlikely at this point." Kolya was obviously confident that his plan had succeeded as he stopped transmission.
The young messenger continued his message, not bothering to whisper this time. "Kolya has destroyed Gates two and three already! I can only assume that the last explosion was the destruction of Gate one. We're trapped in this forsaken place!"