Chapter 11 – Side Effects
"Are you in pain?" Teyla asked, eyeing the punctures on Sheppard's hand.
"No…getting a little woozy, though." John swayed again and Teyla offered him the box to put the sphere back, then pulled his arm quickly around her shoulders.
"Can you make it back up the ladder?"
"I think so."
"Good. Go ahead of me."
John didn't argue, mounting the first rung with her support, then slowly pulling himself upward. Teyla started up behind him, keeping alert in case he faltered. It was perhaps fifteen feet to the top and he made good time with the first five rungs, then stopped, and she could hear him panting above her. "Colonel?"
"I'm…good." He started again, slower this time, and was within three rungs of the top when his body seemed to go slack.
"John?" Teyla waited a moment, but he didn't respond. His knees started to buckle though, and she scrambled up behind him, wedging her feet onto the same rung as his, while reaching around and leaning her weight into his back to hold them both to the ladder. "Ronon!"
The Satedan appeared at the top of the shaft a moment later with a flashlight, and he must have had a better view of Sheppard's face than she did because he immediately cursed and dropped down to lay flat on his stomach, reaching toward his teammates. "I've got him. Let go and climb back down, then I'll pull, you push."
"Very well."
Within moments they were back on solid ground, as it were, and Rodney was firing questions so fast that he was missing the answers Teyla was giving to Carson. What had happened? They'd found the box with the sphere and it had injected John with whatever it contained. He'd started to feel lightheaded and passed out while climbing back up. Was it the cure the colonel had been looking for? Maybe, she wasn't sure.
Teyla handed Carson the stone box with the now-empty glass bulb and stepped aside so he and Ronon could carry Sheppard back to the sofa. She was hopeful when John's eyelids fluttered, but other than brief incoherent mumbling, he did not wake and she was forced to join the others in waiting.
Carson examined John thoroughly, but the most he could say with certainty was that the colonel was asleep. Be it from whatever was now running through his bloodstream or exhaustion, he didn't know, but he leaned toward the former since he couldn't wake his patient by any conventional method.
After a time, Ronon grew impatient with waiting and excused himself to get some air—if you could consider a grunt and a wave excusing oneself. Teyla was asking Carson questions about brainwaves, trying to better understand what was happening to John. Rodney lapsed into perturbed silence, once again bringing his arsenal of scanners and computer equipment to bear on the Ancient device. Its power levels hadn't declined, but they were beginning to fluctuate again, giving him sufficient puzzlement to stay distracted until a sizable amount of rustling from the direction of Carson's open med kits caught his attention.
Taking stock of the scene, he quickly noticed that John was again sporting an IV and would soon be hooked to a cardiac monitor. Rodney had been working for slightly over two hours, but it still begged the question, "He's getting worse?"
"Not exactly worse, just…slowing down."
McKay looked from his motionless friend back to Carson and scowled. "What does that mean?"
"His internal systems are slowing down. Heart rate, respiration, even his temperature and blood pressure are slowly declining below what is normal for someone at rest."
"Why?"
"I can only suppose that it's due ta that substance he was injected with. Has there been any change with the device?" Beckett asked hopefully.
"If you count power fluctuations with no rhyme or reason," Rodney said crossly. He set aside his tablet and stood up, cracking his back. "Ronon better not have stolen all my power bars. I'm starving." He made his way over to his pack and rummaged around, coming up with three bars. Unwrapping one, he stuffed the other two in his pocket. "Where is Conan, anyway? Even he doesn't need that much air. Come to think of it, where's Teyla?"
"I believe they went stargazing."
"But it's cloudy!"
"Well why don't ya go find them and see what they're doin' for yourself then?" Beckett said with a touch of impatience.
"No, that's all right. I've had enough of exploring this place, thank you very much." Rodney paced the length of the cabin a few times, eventually coming to a stop near the sofa. Instinctively he reached out a hand, but at the last moment snatched it back, not sure what he'd been intending to do. If Sheppard chose that moment to wake up, it would be awkward if he found Rodney patting his arm or squeezing his hand. Of course, Rodney was no stranger to awkward, and he didn't think there was much danger of the colonel waking, but that didn't really solve anything.
Carson stepped away and McKay felt even more self-conscious that Beckett had noticed his almost-gesture. Then he said the hell with it and reached out again, poking Sheppard's shoulder with his index finger. The brief flash of a glowing grid before his eyes was unexpected and Rodney again yanked his hand back. He glanced at Beckett, but the doctor was digging through a pack and hadn't seen his startled motion. Being the scientist that he was, McKay had to try again in order to prove or disprove his hypothesis that he'd just had a hallucination. Moving slower, preparing himself, Rodney poked John again and this time didn't pull away when the same grid as before materialized. It turned out to be a HUD, like in the jumpers. That alone didn't really surprise him. The information scrolling across the display on the other hand…
"That's unbelievable!" Rodney studied the screen with wide eyes. It was the exact same layout as in the jumpers, with a large portion of the screen serving as a primary systems monitor and a lesser part monitoring external conditions and secondary systems. The systems weren't those of an Ancient spacecraft though, they were John's. His heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, and half a dozen other things that Carson didn't even usually keep track of were plainly displayed on the screen. And while he wasn't sure how, Rodney understood what all of it meant.
Shifting his eyes away, the physicist took in the other side of the screen and his astonishment grew. The power level of the Ancient device was graphed in real time, a function calculated on the colonel's level of consciousness and the drug's level of absorption in his system. "That's just…cool!"
"What's that Rodney?"
McKay heard Beckett's voice as if at a distance, but it was easily ignorable. The sudden presence of a hand on his shoulder startled him enough that he inadvertently broke contact with Sheppard, though.
"Rodney?"
"Huh?" McKay asked, rather unintelligently if he did say so himself, but he figured he was allowed since snapping immediately from jumper interior, soaring through the clouds to cabin interior, standing still, was fairly disconcerting.
"I asked what was cool." Beckett frowned, taking in the scientist's utterly shocked expression. "Are ya all right? Ya look like ya just saw a ghost."
McKay let out a breath. "No, not a ghost, much scarier than that. I think I just saw the inside of Sheppard's mind…though really, all things considered, it wasn't that scary. I would have expected a lot worse from him…"
Beckett rolled his eyes.
"It was the cockpit of a jumper," McKay said, going on to describe what he'd seen.
"Was there any indication of what the drug is doing ta him?"
"The levels haven't equalized yet. When they do, it will show up on the graph." The words spilled out, and after they did, McKay's mouth dropped open slightly in surprise.
"What levels?" Beckett asked.
Rodney just shook his head. "The drug…I think? Look, I have no idea how I know what I just told you, and I don't have enough information at this point to tell you what it means, so don't ask."
"Will ya be able ta connect with the colonel again if ya need to?" Carson asked thoughtfully.
At that, Rodney panicked. "You want me to do it again?! Look, just because I said it was cool doesn't mean I want an encore!"
The scientist's discomfort at the idea was no real surprise to Carson. John had displayed much the same reluctance when their roles had been reversed, but the colonel's exhaustion at the time had served well to mask it. "Hopefully there won't be a need for that, Rodney, but this is the most accurate source of information we have on what's goin' on with that drug and the Ancient device. Assuming the colonel doesn't come out of this on his own, we may need ta intervene, and it would be helpful if this connection of yours is a repeatable process if it comes ta that."
"Well, I'm not sure there's enough data to count what I saw as accurate," the scientist muttered, "but I can do it again if I have to." He looked down at Sheppard for a few moments before asking Beckett, "What do you plan to do in the meantime? Make a sculpture out of chicken bones?"
The question lacked much of McKay's usual acerbic tone and Carson just sighed in response. "As near as Colonel Sheppard's vitals are tellin' me…and you…he's comfortably asleep. Considering all that he's been through, I don't see that that's a bad thing. I'll be monitoring him closely, but unless and until something changes, we wait."
And wait they did, all through the night and into the middle of the following morning. When Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla returned from a short hike around the cabin, they were startled to find Beckett poking Sheppard's foot with a pin.
"Hey, don't you think that's taking my voodoo comments far too literally?!" McKay asked, wide-eyed. When Carson responded with a look of concern rather than an annoyed frown, Rodney produced the frown himself and demanded, "What's wrong?"
"I tried again ta wake the colonel just now, but I wasn't able. He's not respondin' ta painful stimuli either," Carson dropped the pin back into its container, "and his body's still slowin' down."
"How bad is it?" Ronon questioned.
Beckett shook his head and shrugged slightly. "It's not bloody good. If things keep goin' as they have the last hour…" the doctor turned his worried eyes on Rodney, who swallowed uncomfortably and tried to focus his attention elsewhere. He ultimately failed in the attempt when Teyla gave him a significant look and Ronon nudged him none-too-subtly toward John.
"His body's just…shutting down?" McKay asked quietly after a long moment.
"If the decline keeps on as it is, aye."
"Why now?"
"That's what I need ya ta try ta find out, Rodney. I'm down ta speculation. Ya have a very unique connection ta the colonel right now. I know ya aren't exactly comfortable with the idea, but—"
"Yeah, yeah, return the favor and all that. I get it." Rodney took a deep breath, "You so owe me for this, Sheppard." Without further comment, he reached out and clasped John's shoulder.
If the first time had been disconcerting then this time around was downright terrifying. Not even two seconds after the jumper materialized around him, its nose pitched sharply downward. Rodney grabbed for the back of the pilot's chair, his eyes glued to what lay beyond the windscreen. Gone were the bright blue skies. Lightning flashed, and black clouds billowed past. Inside, things weren't much better. All systems were running on emergency power alone, and while the autopilot was engaged, it was obvious the jumper was losing altitude. McKay almost panicked—he was an amateur pilot at best, and here he was stuck inside a malfunctioning jumper—but then his eyes once again fell on the power-graphing of the Ancient device on the HUD and he reminded himself that this was only a representation of Sheppard. Not that John crashing and burning was a comforting thought in any way, but it likely took his own demise out of the immediate picture…unless that whole transference-of-injury thing worked in reverse also, in which case…crap.
If ever there were a reason to set aside panic and look at a situation objectively, self-preservation always had been and always would be the one reason that motivated Rodney. If that made him a selfish bastard, then, well, at least John would be alive and would have a living selfish bastard to thank for it. McKay sat down in the pilot's chair and glanced over the controls, glad that John's mind had chosen to keep the standard jumper configuration and hadn't gone and moved anything important, like, say, the altitude controls. If he had, then McKay might not have tried the most obvious solution first and pulled up on the controls. Had he failed to do that, he would have also missed the very slight decrease in the device's power.
Even seeing it, the levels were fluctuating so much that it took the scientist some time to figure out that he'd actually caused the power decrease by pulling up, and more specifically, by making two of the lines on the HUD's real-time graph intersect in a nearly paper-thin green range. It was through trial and error that he'd worked it out, and not a moment too soon. The black clouds seemed even more ominous now that rain was buffeting the jumper in sheets, driven by winds that Sheppard's version of inertial dampeners were having a difficult time compensating for.
McKay realized that the intersecting lines represented the very same 'unequal levels' he'd told Beckett about after his first connection with Sheppard, and suddenly the whole problem seemed so clear that he almost laughed. Almost, because he still had a long way to go in fixing it. One of the lines was John's level of consciousness. The other was the drug's rate of absorption in his body, and somehow the first was directly affecting the second. If Sheppard's level of consciousness approached wakefulness, then the drug's absorption rate spiked, which in turn caused the jumper to dive—his vitals crashing, his brain activity approaching comatose levels, as it was now. If, on the other hand, his level of consciousness stayed in the realm between wakefulness and comatose, the absorption slowed to its optimal rate and his vitals stabilized. It seemed, then, that it was just a matter of ensuring that John remained in a deep sleep, not being allowed to wake until the drug had metabolized sufficiently to allow his ATA gene to take over the regulation of absorption.
Rodney blinked in surprise. He just couldn't get used to random facts like that being planted in his head, but he had to admit it would have been nearly impossible to figure any of this out otherwise. It wasn't like there was a how-to manual present. Gripping the controls tighter he pulled up, keeping one eye on the graph and the other on the storm. The turbulence was making it hard to keep on an upward track, but eventually Sheppard's consciousness-meter responded and entered the graph's tiny green zone. With difficulty, Rodney held altitude there and watched as the other line merged into the green and the device's power level began to drop minutely.
It was the equivalent of flying in the eye of a hurricane, McKay thought. Clouds swirled angrily all around, but the longer he was able to hold things in the green, the more the atmosphere in the immediate vicinity of the jumper calmed. Hands steady on the controls he waited, not about to turn it back over to autopilot, even though it looked to be hours, possibly longer, until Sheppard's gene would be able to take over.
"Rodney, what's going on?"
As before, Carson's voice sounded as if it were coming from a great distance, but it still startled him, and McKay tightened his grip on Sheppard's shoulder even as his hands fisted tighter around the controls of the jumper. "Kind of busy here, Carson."
"Aye, I can see that. John's vitals have improved remarkably in the last ten minutes. What did you do?"
"It's not the kind of thing I feel comfortable explaining while piloting a jumper through a hurricane, so you're just going to have to wait. Now, stop bothering me." It took all his effort to focus on the jumper and talk at the same time, so McKay barely felt the distant pat on his shoulder as he let his attention tunnel back down.
He grew curious as to why the ATA gene could control the absorption of the drug down the line, but not right away, and he searched for the answer as he worked to maintain the green levels on the graph. This time, the answer didn't invade his brain like some of the others had, but came slowly, in the form of the chemical makeup of the drug itself. Rodney wasn't a chemist, but anyone with even a high school science background could see that the molecular structure was incredibly complex—too complex, even, for as smart a gene as the ATA. As with the more intricate pieces of Ancient technology, it seemed there was a learning curve involved before the gene could help the body absorb and metabolize the drug effectively. McKay even had the sense that his own gene was helping to teach Sheppard's through their connection with the device. Never mind that his gene didn't know how to process the drug either…
"Doc, what's McKay doing?" Ronon asked, stopping suddenly in the middle of his sixteenth pace across the cabin.
Carson looked up from his notes and he too tilted his head to the side in curiosity. It had been nearly three hours since Rodney had requested to be left alone, and Beckett had been glad to comply since Sheppard's vitals remained stable. Now, however… "I haven't the foggiest, lad." Beckett crossed to stand beside McKay, who was currently doing an excellent impression of the traditional Athosian greeting, his forehead resting against John's as he knelt beside the couch. "Rodney, care ta give me an update on the colonel?" When no response was forthcoming he reached out and grasped McKay's shoulder, surprised to feel slight tremors beneath his touch. Frowning, he shifted position and pressed his fingers to the side of McKay's neck. The man's pulse was racing, his skin felt clammy, and it was quite obvious from this angle that his position wasn't so much a strategic one but rather one to keep him from falling over. "I was afraid of that."
"What is wrong?" Teyla asked, joining Beckett and Ronon around her other teammates.
"This mental connection they're sharing is extremely physically taxing for the conscious person. When their roles were reversed, I thought that perhaps it was just the colonel's pre-existing injuries that exhausted him so quickly, but that doesn't appear ta be the case."
"So what do we do?" asked Ronon.
"For starters, we move that chair over here. I'd like ta see if we can get Rodney ta sit down."
Ronon eyed the big armchair for a moment, then shoved the coffee table aside with his foot and plunked the chair down in its place, sliding it until it was directly behind McKay. Moving the scientist was less of a chore than they expected. His body was like silly putty and with Carson on one side and Ronon on the other it took very little effort to lift him into the chair. The difficult part was making sure he didn't lose contact with Sheppard in the process.
"Now what?" Any answer to Ronon's question was precluded by John's and Rodney's eyes popping open in unison. Both men sat bolt upright and sucked in huge breaths of air before abruptly collapsing into one another.
TBC…
