Lightning Strikes, part 3
Here's the next part. Some infirmary and just a teeny bit of hurt John. This part sees the lines drawn between John and Rodney, setting the stage for more to come. Enjoy!
Love all of you that have commented. Keep 'em coming! :)
And to all of you that have read my little stories, thanks!
Title: Lightning Strikes
Author: Amycat8733
Rating: T
Pairing(s): John/Teyla
Characters: John, Teyla, Rodney, Ronon, Keller, Lorne, Woolsey
Warning(s): sentient Atlantis
Length: 2555 (this part)
Summary: A lightning bolt brings change to John Sheppard. His bond with the city deepens, bringing its own hazards. Friendship is tested as Rodney and John clash over his new strength.
Part 3
“That did it.” John’s voice was soft as the adrenaline drained away, leaving him spent and tired. That was enough of an opening for the painkiller Jennifer had given him to steal in and sweep him away on a tide of bliss.
Teyla caught John as he went limp, setting the radio aside as she got him settled. Jennifer helped, checking that the lines weren’t tangled. As she reached for her radio again, she could hear Rodney, squawking for Sheppard. “Rodney, John is asleep.”
“Asleep? Wake him up! I need to know how he did that!”
Teyla frowned, even though Rodney could not see it. “I will not.” She let a bit of disgust tinge her voice. “He needs his rest. Whatever he did caused him some pain.”
McKay was silent on the other end. He was subdued when he came back online. “Okay. Tell him…thanks from all of us.”
Teyla smiled a bit. “I will do so, but I think he would appreciate hearing it from you in person more.”
The next day, Rodney and Zelenka gathered some relics and some other items together on their way to proving a hypothesis. The pair had spent most of the night arguing and debating how Sheppard had seen the previous day’s events. McKay thought that he had tapped into Atlantis’ internal surveillance with one of the Ancient machines in the isolation room. Zelenka felt that the Colonel had actually used the conduits and the very substance of Atlantis as an extension of his eyes. Hence the test. They had gathered the items under a masking field so that no electronic eyes of any kind could see what was on their cart. When they got to the infirmary, they brought the cart just inside, but left the masking field on.
“Jeez, why is this place so dark? It’s depressing.” Rodney was moving into full rant as he turned the lights up. “There, that’s better.” He looked over at Sheppard as he sat down. The Colonel was pale, with streaks of red still showing on his fair skin. He was asleep, propped up slightly on a mound of pillows. His head was turned to his left slightly, away from the door and his long fingered hands lay limply in his lap. A bulge under the blanket on his right leg showed where Jennifer had removed the shrapnel from his leg.
“Rodney. Maybe lights are low for a reason?” Zelenka played the voice of reason.
“Yeah, I’m sure that some idiot thought it would be funny to leave the lights low to see if someone trips on something.” Rodney’s rant was in full steam. “Or maybe they wanted to see if Sheppard glows in the dark now! Gee, I could see that now, ‘Come to Atlantis. Our military commander glows in the dark! Saves batteries during blackouts! Works as a lighthouse on his weekends off!”
“Rodney.” Zelenka’s voice held that tone that said he was being an idiot.
Pulling out his datapad, Rodney sat down. “Hmph, whatever. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Seeing that nothing more was forthcoming, Radek pulled out his laptop and settled in a chair of his own to work on some of his own projects.
Waking was uncomfortable. Being awake meant that he felt the burns and the itch where the IV was. Awareness meant he also realized how much he wanted a bath. The clean-up job that Keller, Teyla and Ronon had done was fine, but it didn’t get him truly clean, plus the hot water would ease his sore muscles and his headache. As he woke up, John noticed that someone had turned the lights up and that he had company: Rodney was there with him. Surprisingly, so was Zelenka. It was the Czech scientist that noticed he was awake. He opened his eyes to mere slits, just enough to allow him to see his visitors, not enough to aggravate his headache. As the two scientists put their computers down, John lowered the lights in the room and opened his eyes wider.
“Ah, Colonel. Is good you are awake.” Radek pushed his glasses up. “Thank you for warning. Dr Miller says ‘thanks’ as well.”
Rodney came over, tablet in hand. “Yes, yes. You saved our lives. Super Colonel does it again.”
John narrowed his eyes at Rodney. “McKay.” He drawled the name out, letting Rodney know he was irritated. “What are you doing?”
Rodney looked irritated. “Trying to turn the lights back up in this voodoo cave you’ve taken up residence in.”
“Leave the lights alone.” John was getting irritated, his head starting to pound harder.
“Why? Is the voodoo priestess running an experiment?” Rodney’s snark was coming out. John guessed gratitude went an even shorter distance now.
“No.” John glared at McKay. “I turned the lights down because I had a migraine.” John’s voice was quiet and carried a sharp edge. “I still have a nasty headache and the lights make it worse. And the next time we have a blackout, I’ll see that we have plenty of batteries by not giving you any. I’ll have Lorne attach a manual generator to one of the exercise bikes and let you use that instead.”
As he listened to the sharp dagger hidden in John’s soft-spoken words, Rodney realized that he had screwed up and made his best friend mad. He also realized that Sheppard had referred to his comments to Zelenka, made at a time that the Colonel was definitely asleep. “Um, you heard that…about the batteries?”
John nodded, death glare on simmer. “I also heard the part about me working as a lighthouse. Now, is there a reason you’re here, or did you come to upgrade my headache to migraine status again?”
Rodney looked at Radek. “We…um…wanted to …see how you were doing…and…um…”
Radek pushed his glasses up and smoothed his hair back. “What Rodney is trying to say is that we came by to see you and to ask about yesterday. How did you see us in corridor?”
John closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. “I asked Teyla where you were. When she told me, I could see you like I was standing there. I can also hear Atlantis a lot clearer than I could before. I used to just get uneasy feelings about some of the rooms or objects. Now, talking to her is like talking to you, minus the snark.”
Zelenka jumped on that. “See, see! I told you and you did not believe me!” The little Czech was ecstatic. “Sometimes, for genius, you do not see what is under nose.”
As Rodney started to retort, John intervened. “McKay!” The crack of command in John’s voice had both scientists standing up straighter. John opened his eyes and glared. “If you want to argue, go somewhere else and do it. Oh, and when you leave, take those devices you brought with you. The cacophony is aggravating my headache.”
Rodney and Zelenka were both speechless. Rodney recovered first. “How…? You were asleep, there’s a masking field, plus we threw a sheet over them.”
John opened his eyes and looked at the two scientists. He counted them both as friends, but they could both be so…dense. “I just told you I can hear Atlantis. She didn’t tell me about the devices, though. I can hear every Ancient device in this room. The device in the corner that looks like a patio umbrella emits a sterile field for surgery. The device next to it is for repairing broken bones, but it needs some new crystals. The scanner, here by the bed, has three cracked crystals. They need to be replaced before the machine is used again.”
Zelenka ducked down and pried the maintenance panel off. After pulling out three of the crystals, he found the first cracked one. The next two also showed hairline cracks. “He is right; there are three cracked. They are main crystals. Unit would have failed next time used.”
John closed his eyes, concentrating. “On the cart, you have eight devices. The four on the bottom shelf are parts to other devices; the two on the left go on the middle device on the top shelf. The other three devices are complete; the ones on either edge are prototypes. They can be fixed. The one on the left is a power amplifier for a jumper; the one on the right is a portable cloak. The remaining device is damaged and is unsafe. Do not repair it. It was a torture device.” John stopped, massaging his temples to ease the pain in his head. “The central device, once you reattach its parts, is a city directory. It will tell you what a room was generally used for. The other two pieces from the bottom shelf will glow when you bring them near their parent devices, both of which you have in the vault.”
As the two stared at each other, John opened his eyes. “Now, will the two of you run along and let me suffer in peace?”
“No, you have to help me…us. It’s your duty to help identify the labs and what each device does.” Rodney was shocked that John had asked him to leave.
Pushing himself up straighter, John leveled a glare a McKay, his voice deep and deadly. “Let me get this straight. You want me, the Military Commander of Atlantis, to put aside all of my duties, including protecting your ass, in order to follow you around all day as your research assistant and personal lackey.”
“Yes, that is exactly it. Well, not the protecting me part, but, yes, I want you helping me. Anything else is inconsequential.” Rodney had the bit between his teeth, his mouth running at full speed towards a sheer cliff. “With your help, there could be no more accidents. We wouldn’t have to test devices through trial and error to discover their purposes.” McKay stood, pacing in time with his mouth. “Think of all the wasted time that you would save me. I wouldn’t have to deal with incompetent researchers anymore.
John’s glare moved to Defcon 4. “So you want me to abandon my duty and my life in order to become your slave?” The steel in John’s voice made Zelenka shiver. “I don’t think so. The answer is no. I think you need to leave, now.”
Rodney was flabbergasted. Sheppard was refusing to help him! “But…”
At that moment, Keller walked in. She took one look at the scene, noticing Rodney, Radek, the scanner with crystals on the floor in front of it, the cart by the door and the pain in John’s posture. “Rodney, Dr Zelenka, I think the two of you should leave now.” The snap in the doctor’s voice left no room for disobedience. “And make sure to fix my scanner.”
Zelenka nodded, gathering up the cracked crystals and his laptop. “Yes, yes. Be right back with new crystals.” The diminutive Czech beat a hasty retreat.
McKay was a bit slower. “This is not the end of this. Do not think you can keep this to yourself. I still have more tests I want to run.” He gathered up his datapad and the trolley and headed for the door.
John looked at him. “Rodney.” When his friend turned around, he continued, his deep voice calm, but the hint of steel was still there. “I am not your lab rat, lackey or slave. If you want to know something, you can ask.” The death glare returned. “I know what I can do; I do not need you devising more tests for me and I am not something that you can requisition.”
Rodney was fuming as he left the isolation room.
How dare Sheppard refuse to help him? How could he work the Colonel’s new abilities into his plans if he didn’t know what the man could do? Just because he almost got fried by a rogue lightning bolt was no reason for the man to be an ass. Well, dammit, the man was going to help him whether he liked it or not. He’d go to Woolsey and get him to order the Colonel to help him. Hell, he’d go to O’Neill if he had to!
It was only as he reached his lab that he verbalized these feelings, not caring when Zelenka slipped in after having made a return visit to the infirmary to fix the scanner.
Zelenka let Rodney rant. As the Canadian was right now, there would be no talking sense into the man. He just hoped that McKay could see reason before he did something stupid.
Remembering what the Colonel had told them about the devices, Radek pulled back the sheet and set to manipulating the pieces. He tagged the two intact devices that they were keeping and placed the third into the disposal bin where it would be disassembled by engineers without the ATA gene. He next took the three pieces that formed the city directory and started working with them. It took a few minutes, but, knowing that they went together made it easier. His exclamation as the pieces clicked together drew Rodney out of his rant.
“What did you do?”
Radek looked at the grumpy Canadian. “I assembled the city directory that the Colonel told us of.”
“Really?” McKay looked at the Czech. “Now I guess I need to turn it on?”
Zelenka looked down his nose at Rodney as he would at a dense undergrad student. “I would if I could, but I cannot. You need to initialize it.”
Huffing in irritation, Rodney reached over and touched the device. It lit up at his touch and stayed lit after he removed his hand.
“Ah, it works like consoles in Control Room. Once initialized, any can use it.”
Rodney looked at Radek. “Thanks, Captain Obvious, for that brilliant observation!”
Radek pushed his glasses up. “Rodney, you are being idiot. The Colonel was right. He is not a specimen for you to test. You, more than any of us, know how often testing devices for us that we have told him are safe has landed him in the infirmary.” Taking a breath, Radek continued. “He did not refuse to help you; he refused to be poked, prodded and treated as less than he is.”
Rodney just stared, Radek’s words shocking him onto silence.
“The Colonel needs time to heal, and to adjust to these new abilities. I would imagine that it is like gaining the ability to see after being blind.”
“Yes, yes, let’s just bow and scrape to his highness, Mr. Uber-gene.” Rodney threw his hands up in the air and started pacing. “The poor Colonel gets hit by lightning. Let’s treat him like glass so we don’t give him a headache! Meanwhile, let’s just screw over the scientists that keep this place running!”
Radek looked at McKay with an expression of disgust. “Rodney, listen to yourself! You are so blinded that you want to turn your friend into your slave! You are being an ass!” Zelenka picked up the directory, heading for the door. “If this is how you are going to act, I would not be surprised if the Colonel refuses to help you at all.” With that, exuding an air of disgust, Zelenka stalked from the lab, leaving McKay fuming and stunned in his wake.
*on to part 4*