The Human Body VIII: Getting Under Your Skin, Part 8

[waldos_writings]

Title: The Human Body VIII: Getting Under Your Skin, Part 8
Author: smallwaldo
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Words: 4745 (this part)
A/N: This is both the "Instinct" and "Conversion" chapter of the series. kyrdwyn. Thanks! :)
Summary: "He turned me into a [bug]! ... I got better."

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7



As promised, Dr. Biro had everyone in the conference room when Carson staggered in.  He’d taken ten minutes to shower, shave and change clothes and when he came in Carolyn already had everyone going around giving their individual reports.  Every once in a while he could see someone make a note on their tablet or laptop or maneuver any of the six different physical models of DNA and other cellular structures to keep up with the latest data.

He sat at the head of the table taking in what various geneticists and cellular biologists and other doctors were reporting.  When they finally got around to him Carolyn had a simple question for him.  “How’s he feeling?”

Carson sighed, he wasn’t even sure how to answer that.  “He’s restless, and it’s not just boredom from being confined to the infirmary.  He’s complaining of a failing attention span and compound vision which is giving him headaches.  He told Dr. Weir that he’s concerned about the fact that he’s not all that worried about what’s happening to him.  But he’s not really feeling much anxiety about the actual mutation.  He dislikes having the physical manifestations recorded, but so far he is being cooperative with all of the tests and procedures.”

“Before you came in,” Carolyn said, “We were discussing that if the retrovirus is altering his DNA then we need to send in something to unalter it – or to make substitute cells that aren’t full of Iratus DNA.  The obvious solution is to program stem cells with a massive amount of gene therapy that’ll repair the damage.”

Carson nodded, studying the large DNA model in front of him.  Someone had put black markers over the nucleic acids that were no longer the ones they should be.  Carson was staggered by the number of black balls on the model.

He knew that others were talking – actually Doctors Biro and Morgan were arguing – but he wasn’t really listening.  Something was off… just by a little.  It wasn’t a bad idea to use stem cells, he knew that.  He also knew that any human DNA introduced to the retrovirus would just be converted.  He started to pace, trying to figure out what piece he was missing from the puzzle.

“You aren’t taking into account what it’s doing to his somatic cells!”  Biro was insisting.  Carson shook his head, certain that she wasn’t even listening to herself any more.  The only non-somatic cells were John’s sperm, and he was reasonably sure that no one had tried testing that yet.  Everyone was over-tired and cranky and he was sure that someone would point out the ridiculousness of her statement, so he went back to trying to figure out how it was that stem cells could solve their problem without actually contributing more human DNA which would simply fuel the fire.

He looked at the model again.  Roughly half of the markers were still red – still normal human – and slightly less than half were Iratus.  John was, for all intents and purposes, a proto-Wraith.  Carson figured that thousands of years of evolution had smoothed out the kinks with uneven skin and scales and the other internal and mental complications.

He knew that his retrovirus had done the opposite of what they’d hoped – it had induced the Iratus DNA spread instead of inhibiting or removing it.  It had removed human DNA programming.  Human stem cells would only further the mutation in the wrong direction.

He rolled his eyes.  Of course!  “Wait, wait, wait!  Oh, God!”  He took a deep breath and tried to organize the jumble of semi-formed thoughts in his head.  “We’re looking at this all wrong.  The best idea we’ve had so far is to try to repair his system on a genetic level by administering a massive cloned embryonic stem cell treatment.”

“I still think it’s our best bet,” Biro agreed.

“Introducing more human genetic material into his body would just give the retrovirus more fuel!” Morgan argued.  “I don’t know how much more simply I can say that!”

Carson rolled his eyes wishing his staff would cut the petty bickering.  It was going to take some wrong ideas and some bad ideas to get to the right ideas.  And he had a headache and he simply didn’t want to hear it.  He got to the heart of the matter.  “That’s why we have to use the Iratus bug stem cells.”

He was faintly amused by some of the gobsmacked looks he got for that suggestion.  And, he knew, it did sound insane at the outset, but it was also very possibly the only thing that could work.

Biro began breaking down the plan by announcing the obvious – that they didn’t have any Iratus bugs – embryonic or otherwise.

Carson was too tired, and too stressed, to care that his next suggestion would thoroughly freak out his staff.  “That’s why, ladies and gentlemen, we need to go on an egg hunt.”

When general pandemonium broke out, Carson rolled his eyes.  Like he was really going to send them out to try and collect Iratus eggs.  They needed to shut up and let him talk and then they needed to get back to work.  “Shut it! All of you!” he yelled over the din.

Not used to hearing mild-mannered Carson Beckett raise his voice, the entire room went dead silent.  “I’ll bring it to Dr. Weir.  I suspect she’ll just detail me a set of Marines to go and retrieve the eggs.  I need the three of you –“ he pointed to several of the Ancient Database researchers, “to find a planet that’s known to have Iratus bug colonies as well as anything else we know about their defenses and their weaknesses.

“Carolyn, your team needs to start creating the gene therapy so that we can reprogram the cells as soon as we have them.  I want a team of nurses monitoring the colonel very, very closely while I’m gone.  Everyone else, continue with what you were doing – we need to try and predict what systems will be affected next and we need to continue using the inhibitor to slow the retrovirus’ progress as much as we can.”  Carson slammed his laptop closed and walked out, not bothering to ask if anyone had any questions.

Now to convince Elizabeth that he needed a few good men willing to go with him on a suicide mission.

And after he got that permission, he had to try to explain it all to John.  And hope John didn’t decide that he wasn’t worth the risk.

~~~***~~~***~~~

Carson felt distinctly nauseous by the time he found Elizabeth in the main conference room.  He knew it was at least one part mental and one part physical.  Lack of sleep, lack of food and an abundance of stress would easily cause his stomach to turn just a little.

But the idea of announcing to Elizabeth that the only way they could save John would be by gating to another world and walking into the dead center of an Iratus bug hive - or colony or whatever they’d be called – was not the most settling of thoughts.

He’d never once shirked his duty.  Including going into the field to work on injured people.  But he had to honestly wonder if he wouldn’t have given the information to Elizabeth and had her detail a squad of Marines to take care of it if the patient had been anyone other than John.  He wanted to believe he had the same sense of duty and dedicated to any of his patients – especially any that he had made ill, however inadvertently – but he wasn’t sure that was the case.

He shook himself and squared his shoulders as he walked into the room.  It wasn’t like it mattered at this point.  John was the patient at hand and he was determined to save him.  Whatever the risk.

When the door slid open Carson stood rooted to his spot, not sure how to explain this to Elizabeth.  She had previously shown a ‘cut our losses’ philosophy, and as much as she liked John, Carson wasn’t sure Elizabeth would authorize the such a dangerous mission, wherein a half dozen people or so could be killed or injured, to save one man.  It probably would have been wholly different if John had been contagious, but that wasn’t the case.

“Carson?” Elizabeth said warily when she saw him.  “When you called, you said you thought you had a cure.  I would have expected you to look a little more excited about that.”
 
Carson shook his head, “I wouldn’t go that far.  Not yet.  But we do have a very good lead on what might reverse the mutation.”

“Excellent.  So, I ask again, why don’t you look so pleased by this?”  Elizabeth waved him to a chair while she sat back down behind the table.

“Because of what it’ll take to implement our plan,” he said.  Elizabeth just raised an eyebrow so Carson took a deep breath and plunged in.  “In order to reverse the damage to his DNA we need to send in a gene therapy.  But if we use human cells to try and carry the new RNA the retrovirus will simply latch on to those cells and cause even further mutation.  Which means the only way we can introduce a new strain of genetic material is through Iratus bug stem cells.”  He took a deep breath, having said all that without one.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened as her brain caught up with his words.  “You need an Iratus bug?”

Carson shook his head and ran his hand through his hair.  “Not a whole one… actually not a bug at all, I mean, not yet – “

“Carson!” Elizabeth cut in, “Calm down and just tell me what you need to do.”

Carson blew out his breath.  “We need Iratus bug eggs.  We’ll need to go to a planet that they live on and get a sample of the eggs.”

Elizabeth sat back in her chair.  “That’ll be risky, won’t it?”

“I’ll go alone if you don’t think it fair to risk anyone else, but Elizabeth, this is the only way it’ll work.”  He had no idea what had prompted him to say that, but he realized in hindsight that it was true.  He’d do this alone if that was what it took.

“Okay, that, right there: that’s not going to happen.  No one is going to walk into a nest of those things on their own.”

Carson had opened his mouth to object when Rodney came blustering in, Lorne on his heels.

“Elizabeth, Carson,” he said as his only greeting before launching into a speech of his own.  “Carson, one of your insect biologist guys called down to get Radek and me to help him go through the database to pull up anything we could find on the Iratus bugs.  I thought, you know, at first it was just theoretical, but then he told me what you planned to do.  Are you nuts?”

Carson took in yet another breath to protest, but Elizabeth cut him off by asking Rodney, “Before we decide if this is doable, let's get all the facts on the table.  What exactly do we know about these bugs?”

Rodney was pacing now.  “The Ancient Database has quite a lot of information on the Iratus bugs.  We know what planet they're on and we know they like cool, damp, dark places to lay their eggs.”

“They shouldn’t be hard to locate,” Lorne put in from where he’d perched on the edge of a table.

“Wait a minute,” Elizabeth stopped them,  “The last time we ran into just one of these bugs we almost lost Sheppard.  How do you expect to just walk right into one of their nests?”

“I don’t see as we have any other choice!” Carson cut in, starting to worry about the time factor.  “We need the Iratus stem cells and the best stem cells come from embryos.  With them we actually have a chance of saving Colonel Sheppard; without them he’ll die.”  Carson wasn’t sure he could make this any plainer.

“And this is the only option we have?” Elizabeth asked.

“And time’s an issue as well,” Carson told her without even trying to go back and explain why this was the only viable option.

“You have no idea what will happen,” she objected.

“The only one certainty: what will happen if we do nothing.”  Carson was feeling the press of time on him, in his mind’s eye he could see the green scaly skin creeping across John’s body, feel his mind slipping further and further away.

Carson was extremely glad to hear the military leader pro tem step in and agree with him.  He nodded as Lorne said,” We all understand the risks, Dr. Weir.  And I believe that Colonel Sheppard would do the same for any one of us.”

Carson knew that what Lorne said was true.  He also knew that John would have a hard time accepting that other people were willing to take that same risk for him.  He wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to tell John of their plan.  He was debating the pros and cons of that idea when he heard Elizabeth finally say, “Permission granted.”


Carson patted Lorne on the shoulder in thanks -- thanks for backing him up, thanks for volunteering to accompany him.  “I’ll need some time to get my things together.”

“Okay, gear up.  One hour, then,” Lorne said hopping off the table.

~~~***~~~***~~~

Carson was being briefed by his entomologist who had to be told repeatedly that there was no way in hell Carson was letting him go on the mission when Carolyn came in and told him that she was just back from giving John his inhibitor shot and that John was asking for him.

He had Meyers put together the things they’d need to collect the samples and had him scan the research to see what else could be done to try and keep them safe and then headed back to where they had John, hopefully resting.

“John, how are you feeling?”

“If you’ll excuse the pun, a bit antsy.”  He was sitting on the side of the gurney swinging his feet and crossing and uncrossing his arms.

Carson put a hand on his shoulder to try and steady him.  “I know.  But we have some very promising leads now.  Hopefully we’ll be reversing this thing before the end of the night.”

John raised an eyebrow.  “Really?  Um… wow.  What did you find out?”

So much for not telling John of their plans.  “We figured out how to avoid introducing more human DNA for the retrovirus to ‘feed on’.  We just need to get the right kind of cells – cells that we can reprogram to start a very specific kind of gene therapy.”  John made a face. Carson had hoped to be non-specific enough in his answers that John wouldn’t catch on, but clearly he knew something was up.

“’The right kind of cells’” he echoed.  “If you can’t use human cells, what kind of cells do you plan on using?”

Carson gently took John’s hand, now completely scaled and discolored, in his gently.  “We need to use Iratus bug embryonic cells.  We don’t have to bring back any of the actual bugs, just their –“

“Embryos?”  John asked, looking disquieted.  “How the hell do you tell a pregnant Iratus bug anyway?”

Carson smiled at him. “No, it’s nothing like that.  I need their eggs.  That’ll give me the cells we need.”

John nodded, still not looking at all relaxed by the idea.  “Who are you sending to try and get them?  There are a few guys who –“

“It’s all been decided already.  If I understood Rodney correctly, he volunteered your team – not that I think I could keep them off this mission with an elephant tranquilizer.  Major Lorne will get us some further security.”

“Get ‘us’,” John repeated. “Carson, you can’t… This isn’t something you have to do yourself.”  He squeezed Carson’s hand back, but then tried to pull away as he was reminded what he was turning into.

“Aye, John, I do,” Carson said softly, sliding his hand up John’s arm, letting him hide his scaly left hand under his right arm.  “I did this to you –“

“Carson-“ John tried to object, but Carson wouldn’t have it.

“I know you’ve said you don’t blame me, but even so, I did this.  I have to do anything I can to set this to rights.”  Carson kept his voice low, hoping it wouldn’t crack.

John leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Carson gently stroked his cheek. “I know.  But I don’t want to lose you either – especially to something of my own creation – and the only way we’ll have a strong chance of curing this is to have those cells.  I need to go to be sure we get exactly what we need.  I want you home and soon.  And I want you to be the man I fell in love with,” Carson said quietly, his breath barely making it to John’s face.  “And I don’t give a damn what you look like, but I know it’s getting harder and harder for you to concentrate and harder for you to control your impulses, even with the inhibitor drug we’ve been giving you.  We need to do this.  And I have to go, do you understand?”

Slowly John nodded against him.  “I’m supposed to be the one taking the risks in order to keep you safe.”

Carson pulled back just a little and stroked John’s cheek.  “Aye, and you have many, many times.  This time it’s my turn.”

John shook his head slowly, but Carson knew that it wasn’t a denial.  “It’s wrong.  I’m supposed to go out and get the crap kicked out of me and you’re supposed to stay here to put me back together again when I get back.”

Carson smiled at him just a little. “I have no intention of getting hurt out there, so there’ll be no need for you to brush up on your first aid so that you can take my place.  Alright?”

John made a face that clearly said that it was not all right, but he didn’t verbalize it.

“I’ll let you know when we get back, but with any luck I’ll be in the lab for several hours after that refining whatever it is Dr. Biro’s been working on with the old cells while I’m gone.”  He squeezed John’s arm before backing away.  “Major Lorne wants to leave very soon.  I need to go get the rest of the information from Dr. Meyers and grab my gear to go off world.  I’ll see you very soon.”

John nodded, hoping like hell that this wasn’t the last time he’d see Carson alive.  He refused to say ‘good-bye’, so instead he just said nothing.

He watched as Carson left, his fidgetiness not improving.  In fact it was getting considerably worse now that he had worry for Carson occupying part of his mind.  He kept seeing himself lying on the floor of the puddlejumper with that thrice-damned bug wrapped around his neck.  He kept remembering the pain that had lanced through him every time Ford or Teyla had tried to remove the damn thing.  He remembered the feeling of absolute fear that would have paralyzed him if the bug hadn’t already done so as Ford yelled for Teyla to move his dogtags and then advanced on him with the defibrillation paddles that he knew were going to kill him.  They’d had to hope it would only be temporary.  And he remembered the little things – how uncomfortable his chest had been when they’d resuscitated him and how stiff and sore his neck had been for weeks after.  And he’d only faced off with one of those mutant wasps from hell.

The idea of Carson walking into a whole hoard of those things terrified him on a level that even having his brain going bug-native couldn’t repress.

~~~***~~~***~~~

After Carson left John laid back on his bed counting ceiling tiles.  He couldn’t read even though someone had brought both his Palm Pilot and his copy of War and Peace. His eyes were vacillating between thirty-two and sixty-four little visions.  He could still manage to walk around and look people in the eye, but things so small with such subtle differences, like letters, were lost on him.

It made the antsiness worse. Not being able to distract himself meant simply laying around in the infirmary and listening to himself devolve.

He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like recently the more his eyes gave him hell, the sharper his ears got.  He wasn’t sure if it was like people on Earth (or, he supposed, really anywhere) who simply learned to use their perfectly average hearing better to compensate for the lack of usable information from their eyes, or if he was actually developing more acute hearing as part of his mutation.

He lay back and closed his eyes.  He swore he could hear Carson’s voice through the closed door to the ward, but that could have easily been wishful thinking. He focused his hearing on the sounds and found that with a little concentration he could make out a few words and phrases.  “… cave… inhibitor dose… don’t return… guard…”

John sighed wishing he hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop after all.  For all he knew Carson was saying, “If I don’t return before supper, don’t wait on me,” but John knew it was more along the lines directions on what his staff should do if he didn’t return at all.

John turned onto one side and then tossed onto the other.  He couldn’t get comfortable; he wasn’t tired.  He started to put his hands behind his head but as the left passed over his compound eyes, he stopped and stared at it.  The skin was wrinkled and heavily veined.  It felt tough – like his whole hand was covered in calluses or blister-toughened skin.  He stared at his nails, which were now such a dark brown they were almost black.  They’d grown at least a centimeter and a half and were coming to a point. He sighed.  He supposed they were more talons or claws than nails at that point.

He sat up and put his hands on his own shoulders trying to stretch out or massage out the kinks in his own neck muscles.  He could feel the roughness of the mottled skin that now spread from his shoulder up to just under his ear.  He wondered if the mutated cells reaching up his neck explained his improved – or at least what he thought was improved – hearing.  He wanted to ask Carson but just as he was about to ask the nurse to get him, he remembered that Carson was just about to go off world to face down an unimaginable number of life-sucking bugs in order to try and cure this damn thing.

He had hopped off the bed and was pacing about four steps in either direction in front of it before he had fully formed the thought that he really, really had to move.  He continued in his tight circle, shaking his arms out and rolling his head, trying to dissipate some of the insane need to wiggle and expend energy.

He felt a hand on his elbow and had to check the impulse to grab the offending appendage and wrestle whoever dared to sneak up on him to the ground.  Instead he simply shook off the hand and stared somewhat angrily at the nurse who was now standing by him.

“Colonel, are you okay?  I mean, you know, are you in pain? Is something wrong?  I mean, different?”

John consciously softened his gaze and relaxed his posture.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean to shake you like that.  I didn’t see you there, you just… startled me.”  He couldn’t think of her name even though he knew he was often assigned to her caseload when he was in the infirmary because nine times out of ten she couldn’t be charmed or bullied and she was a stickler for making sure her charges followed their doctor’s orders.  He remembered that they had hammered out something of a working relationship when he was in the infirmary: he didn’t give her too much shit and she didn’t threaten to use a rectal thermometer or give him any shots in the ass that could be given elsewhere.  But damned if he could remember her name.

She shook her head dismissively.  “It’s okay.  Dr. Beckett said you were having problems with your vision.  I should have announced myself.  My bad,” she said cheekily knowing that John hated that expression almost as much as Carson did.

John was glad to see whatever discomfort had come over her had been squelched.  He knew he was both acting and looking very odd, but he wasn’t ready to be tiptoed around yet.  “You needed something?”

“You were pacing.  I wanted to know why.”

John sighed.  “I have all this energy that I need to kill.”  And then his mouth got ahead of his brain and he began to unload on her.  “Carson’s going on a mission that could very easily get him and my whole fucking team killed and I’m stuck sitting here waiting for them to get back - if they get back – in the small hopes that they can undo all this.  The least I should be doing is getting the fucking eggs myself.  It’s not like any of them need the damn things!”  He wasn’t sure when he started yelling and he took a deep breath and hung his head. “Sorry.”

The nurse – Laura, Linda, Lisa… something, damn why couldn’t he remember her name? – “If you weren’t at least a little apprehensive and nervous right now, we’d be a hell of a lot more worried,” she excused him.  “Look, Dr. Beckett wants you to have a security detail with you, but he said that if you got too wound up, you could take a walk.  Do you want me to get one of the guys outside to get you out of here for a while?”

Feeling another level of his life – his independence, his control over his own troops – slipping away, John nodded forlornly.  “Yeah,” he said quietly.  Then an idea struck him.  “Yeah, I need to go see Dr. Weir.”  Hopefully Carson, Lorne and the rest wouldn’t have left yet.  Maybe he could put this insane energy level to use.

~~~***~~~***~~~

The guy they detailed on him was a new guy just off the Daedalus.  John wondered who thought that was a good idea.  If this damn disease didn’t kill him John was going to have to up to this kid and say, “So, I’m Colonel Sheppard – your boss.  When you saw me last I was turning into a bug and you had orders to shoot me if I started acting weird, but I’m okay now and you have to follow my orders.”  That was going to go over like a lead balloon.

He glanced at the kid.  “So…” he didn’t even have rank to fall back on in these track suit uniforms they wore.  “Lieutenant?” he guessed.

“Ensign, sir,” the kid replied smartly.

“Ensign?  You’re Navy?” John asked amazed.

“Yes sir.  The general thought that on a world that was more than ninety-five percent water, it would be good to have a naval presence.”

John wished he could tell if the kid was pulling his leg or not.  He didn’t know Landry at all, but it did sound exactly like the kind of logic he could expect from his short encounter with General O’Neill.  But still, a Navy presence?  “Okay, Ensign…” John gave him a look that said he still needed a name.

“Branmeyer, sir.  Michael Branmeyer.”

John automatically reached out to shake the kid’s hand but pulled back as he remembered what his hands looked like.  “Good to meet you.  I’m Colonel Sheppard.  Your military contingent bug-in-command.”  He was grateful to see the kid crack a small smile.  “Let’s go Branmeyer, I need to talk to Dr. Weir.”  He lead them up to Weir’s office, the kid staying a few steps behind him, making sure he a good line of sight on John at all times.