As Rodney slowly woke, he knew only that he felt absolutely horrible. It was difficult to breathe, and all sensation had left his bound hands some time before his memory had left him. He tried to wriggle some circulation back into his fingers and shifted his weight off his left arm in an effort to relieve the numbness. His hands felt sticky and slick, somehow giving him enough leeway to pull against and tear free from the ruined fiber-optic cable that bound his wrists.

Rolling onto his stomach, all he really wanted to do was to sleep off the dazed and bewildered feeling that road-blocked itself in between his barely-conscious thought processes and memory. Hands grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him onto his back. Rodney sleepily resisted, trying to pull away from and ignore them, but to no avail. The hands were cold and slimy and were trying to feel for his pulse. He vaguely heard his name being called softly as if from far away, trying to get his attention.

"Rodney..." Carson whispered, visibly relieved to feel a strong pulse under his fingertips. His expression probed Rodney questioningly.

Rodney slowly forced his eyes open and found himself nervously looking up into Carson Beckett's pale and disconcerted face, but the reasoning behind why he felt nervous escaped him for the moment. He shakily pushed himself up into a sitting position and tried to rub the numbness from his aching wrists. As he glanced down at them, he could see the discolored lines across the back of his hands where the cable had bit into his skin, as well as copious globules of mucus that had formed on his hands and were now dripping onto his pants.

He looked up and a sudden surge of panic began to pulse through him as the memory of Carson's rage was brought back unbidden to his mind. Terrified, Rodney shrank back reflexively and looked out across the room, wondering if the water was deep enough not to break his legs in a fall if he tried to squeeze underneath the railing. But Carson seemed to sense what was running through his mind and firmly took hold of his jacket with his hands, once again smearing it with slimy mucus.

Rodney was vaguely aware of Carson's hurt look through the panic straining in his head.

He could picture that moment in the isolation room that had him in the same grip with crystal clarity, and the only real difference other than their location was Carson's worried expression. His sickly pale green eyes still seemed harsh despite an apparent return to sanity. Rodney willed himself to calm down. He remembered what happened the last time he had pressed him to let him go and didn't want that line of events to repeat itself; Carson might not have the will to resuscitate him next time.

Slowly, his labored breathing subsided as he sat back and waited to see what his captor would do. He let out a relieved sigh when Carson simply released his hold on his jacket and sat down next to him, figuring that he must not have been feeling much better than Rodney felt himself. He discreetly eyed the ladder that was behind him just a couple of scant meters away.

Carson sighed heavily. He felt like he wanted to apologize, to say something to make Rodney understand what was happening, but found he was unable to summon the words. His thoughts and feelings passed fleetingly fast, and he couldn't have hoped to put much of it into words even if he had felt able to speak. His thoughts wandered listlessly, and at first he wasn't sure what he had just heard. Then the sounds became clearer. There were people outside, still relatively far away, but he could hear them splashing the water as they waded through it.

Caught by surprise, fear and panic began to murmur from the depths of his mind. He knew that they were looking for him, and he felt the urge to run away and hide almost overwhelm him. In that moment of hesitation, Rodney took a chance and bolted for the ladder. Carson's rage was once again dredged up through the surface of his fear as he bounded after him.

Rodney shimmied down the ladder and ploughed through the water as fast as he could make himself move. His arms burned with the effort as the recently renewed circulation made them feel rubbery and weak, and his throat clenched with the strain of heaving breaths through abused airways. He desperately clawed at the water, trying to make it to the steps near the doorway before Carson could reach him.

Finally reaching the steps, Rodney scrambled past and ran as fast as his feet would carry him. The sloshing of the footsteps of a search team grew closer, and he was suddenly utterly terrified of what they might do to him. He stopped for a moment, trying to debate whether or not to go to them for help or to run away, but could not immediately decide. An instant later, he was firmly in Carson's grasp and being dragged away from the sound of the footsteps through the water.

He was too exhausted to fight him. Carson yanked him along from corridor to corridor, but seemed more annoyed than angry. Rodney's mind started to burn with fatigue, and he almost tripped over his own feet several times in the process. He doubled over as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The pain in his mind slowly worsened as though each step was burning him alive until he finally cried out with anguish.

Carson stopped and laid him on the floor, his annoyance gone for the moment. He tried to lay a hand against Rodney's mouth in an attempt to stifle the noise, but the effort was futile. The bounding footsteps of a search party still echoed through the corridor, looming ever closer. He didn't know exactly where they were, but a voice in the back of his mind nagged at him to take Rodney someplace safer to recuperate.

He hit the door panel to open the door to one of the unused and broken-down living quarters in that section, dragged his burden through, and then closed the door behind them. He held his breath and clenched his hand over Rodney's mouth to keep him quiet. Footsteps passed by the doorway outside. One particularly heavy-sounding set of boots, probably belonging to Ronon, stopped dangerously close to the door. After a moment, he moved on with the rest of his search party and Carson let out a nervous sigh of relief.

Rodney's mind burned. No matter how much he wished it would go away, it only grew stronger. Something inside his mind broke apart, and the torrent of fire overwhelmed him completely. He rolled onto his side and buried his face deep in his arms. Slowly, the pain faded into a dull ache in the back of his mind, ever present. Rodney willingly slipped into a deep trance, listening idly to his heartbeat and the dripping of water in the darkness, despite the relative dryness of the ruined room.

He couldn't quite remember for sure, but if the thought had crossed his mind that Carson was weak-willed for succumbing to the virus, this was a moment John would have gladly recanted. He was getting sick, and if he hadn't felt it coming on before, he certainly did now. His limbs were weak and sore, his throat felt swollen, and he was sure he had a fever. It was at least ten times worse than any bout of the flu he remembered having before, and he suspected that he hadn't even reached the worst stages of infection yet, certainly not if Carson's condition was any indication. It was worse even than being transformed into an Iratus bug.

He rolled from his back onto his side and tried to cover his face with the blanket he'd been given by the orderly. The lights had become far too bright, and the nurses that occasionally tended to him had been reluctant to comply with his requests that they be turned off. Feverish chills ran down his spine and beads of sweat trickled across his skin, causing him to shiver uncontrollably under the blanket. He was miserable.

The latest round of blood tests seemed to be taking a lot longer than usual, though at this point he really couldn't have cared less about the reason why. Every few minutes, John peered down at his shaking hands under the blanket, wondering when he'd finally see the next sign of the virus taking over his body in the form of mucus-covered hands. How long after that would it be before he lost control of himself, like Carson did? When would he become a danger to the people around him? When would they become fearful enough that they might decide to restrain him to the cot?

He thought that perhaps the time had finally come when the orderly that had visited him before appeared at the door, still accompanied by two guards. John weakly lifted himself up into a sitting position as the orderly gingerly swabbed his arm with alcohol for what he thought was going to be another IV line. Instead, his gaze was met with a butterfly needle, a perfect indicator that they wanted more blood. John groaned in disgust. How much blood did they really need to measure how far the virus had progressed?

"Don't worry, Colonel," the orderly assured him. "I've got some pretty good news with the bad news this time."

"Well, give me the bad news first then," he asked tiredly.

"Alright," the orderly began tentatively as he expertly stuck the needle into one of the more prominent veins on John's arm. "The bad news is that we're probably going to need a lot more blood samples from you, and you'll be feeling pretty sick for some time."

John sighed and ran his hand through his hair, not sure how much more bad news he could take. "And what's the good news?"

The orderly's face formed itself into a warm smile. "You're going to be just fine. And thanks to you, once Dr. Beckett and Dr. McKay are found, they're going to be just fine too."

"What do you mean?" He was genuinely perplexed. "Why is it thanks to me?"

"Your initial exposure to the virus was so small that your body has had time to develop an anti-body," he explained carefully with more McKay-like hand gestures. "The incubation period of the virus was too long for it to have enough time to overwhelm your immune system. We're working on developing a treatment using the anti-bodies from your blood as I speak."

John couldn't remember a time in his life where he felt so relieved. The good news had certainly been worth waiting for, even if he had to suffer through being sick for a while longer. "Where is Dr. Weir? I told you I needed to speak with her as soon as possible."

The orderly held up his hands submissively. "I told her that you wanted to speak with her, but she's been very busy. I'm sure she'll come to see you when she has a chance."

He took a deep breath to release some tension as he realized that, now that his immune system was fighting the virus, he was the least of Dr. Weir's worries at the moment. John lay back on the cot, trying to relax, but the shivers returned in full force. The orderly helpfully retrieved John's blanket from the floor and covered him with it.