From Hereon After I: The Lies We Tell

By Alli Snow

Chapter 1

The day had started out cool, sporadically shaded by clouds in an otherwise clear sky, but by mid-afternoon all that had changed. More cloud cover - grayer, heavier, lower - had rolled in, not masking the hidden sun but rather amplifying its effects. The heat was both smothering and direct, bouncing off the sidewalk, ricocheting off the sides of structures, building up in the atmosphere with every passing moment until the air seemed to be more liquid than gas.

I'd no sooner stepped out of my car than the sweat began rolling down my back in earnest. The inside of the car had been bad enough - the small electric motor could barely sustain the car's engine and air-conditioning at the same time - but it had at least provided some relief.

Not to mention some cover.

I tried not to look nervous as I left the parking lot, starting up the concrete path towards the business park. The grass that had been a lush green on my last trip here was now withered and pale - they simply couldn't spare the water any longer - and that only contributed to the post-Apocalyptic feel of the place. Looking to my left, across the street through the hot, shimmering air, I could see three boys standing on the sidewalk. They weren't more than sixteen or seventeen, and by all rights should have been in school, but the fact that they weren't was hardly surprising. Two were Latino, one was Caucasian, and they were dressed from head to toe in black - not in ignorance of the heat but in defiance of it. Even from this distance, I could see and feel them watching me unabashedly, and despite the oppressive warmth of the day, I shivered.

After far too long a walk across the sun-stripped business park, I arrived at the Janus Building. It was one of the more unassuming parts of the complex, and one of the most heavily guarded. I pulled open the heavy first door and stepped into a stuffy anteroom; the door closed and locked behind me. "State your name and business," said a gruff, disembodied male voice. Instinctively, I looked up towards the speakers, mounted on the ceiling. Beside them were the vents that would expel anesthetic gas if my answers weren't kosher.

I clasped my hands in front of me. They felt empty, not holding my briefcase, but I had left that at home. It would have only caused more tie-ups with Janus Security. "Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter," I said, speaking clearly. "I'm here for an fourteen-thirty meeting with General Gena Dirae."

There was a pause as Security consulted his records. "Your authorization code, ma'am?" he said finally, sounding considerably more pleasant.

"Nine three six delta."

The inner door unlocked with a hiss and a rush of cool air, and I gratefully stepped forward.

The inner sanctum was dark, the lights dimmed in accordance with the Conservation Laws, but someone had taken a chance and splurged on the air conditioning. I took a deep breath of cold, chemically treated air and smiled, feeling the sweat moistening my neck and back beginning to evaporate.

There was no lobby in Janus, no help desk. Even Security was hidden from all eyes; probably up on the fifth floor, actually, with an emergency patrol somewhere here on the first. There was only a singular long hallway, walls painted gray, doors painted white, the elevator at the end of the line a dull silver. Only every third light panel glowed, and it glowed weakly. There was no carpet; my heels clicked against the linoleum and the sound echoed through the seemingly abandoned building.

My destination was Room 116, and I reached it quickly. There was no window set into the door, no nameplate fixed to the wall beside it. It might just as well have been a storage closet, rather than the office of a highly influential and much-touted Air Force General. Before I could speak or raise my fist to knock, there came the sound from within of an electronic deadbolt unlatching, and a woman's voice came through a hidden speaker: "Come." It was not an entreaty; it was a demand.

Dirae's office was nearly as utilitarian and sparse as the rest of the building; it looked as though she might have only been here for a few days rather than nineteen long and arduous months. The only thing that had changed since I'd been here last was that her desk, before utterly unadorned, was now decorated by a fist-sized rock scrawled upon in marker and smothered with purple glitter. The woman caught my somewhat puzzled glance and smiled humorlessly. "My daughter made it for me in kindergarten. It's a paperweight."

"Ah," I said simply, hoping I hadn't offended.

Dirae rolled her eyes, letting me know I hadn't. "Take a seat, Colonel." She waited until I had lowered myself into the other piece of furniture in the room: a molded plastic contraption probably constructed to make visitors uncomfortable while the office's owner lounged in her fabric-padded chair. "Did you ever get around to having kids, Carter?"

I froze, surprised by the question, but quickly recovered. "Um... no ma'am."

The General leaned forward, lacing her fingers together on the gray desk top. "Mind if I ask why? I mean, if a woman like me, with my kind of life, with my kind of... problems can get settled down, do the family thing... why not a pretty young thing like you?"

I ducked my head to hide an embarrassed smile. "I don't know if 'young' is a very accurate description of me anymore, General."

Dirae waved a dismissive hand, sitting back in her chair. "Anything under forty is positively childlike to me, you know that. And it's Gena, Carter. It's too hot outside for people to be ranking each other."

"Then it's Sam, Gena," I said, allowing myself a more open smile now, but taking heed of Dirae's words. By 'hot' she had meant more than just the temperature.

"Great," she proclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest and candidly appraising me. I did the same, although less brazenly.

General Gena Dirae was fifty-seven. She was a practical woman, sometimes harsh, always no-nonsense: a trait I admired but that rankled with many. Her appearance reflected her attitude towards life: her hair was bluntly cut at the jawline, mostly raven-black but streaked with gray; no time for color treatments. Her complexion was dusky and lined; no time to apply sunblock every single morning. Her eyes, however, were clear hazel, and probably still as sharp as they had ever been.

Despite our friendliness and assumed familiarity, this knowledge comprised all that I knew about Gena Dirae. I simply didn't need to know more. All I needed to know, she had told me when we had first met, was that she was on my side - whatever that meant. She had always been kind to me, in an acerbic kind of way, and I counted myself lucky to have her broad-ranging support... but I never forgot how little I knew about her or her motives. Every meeting with her was a new opportunity for betrayal and deceit to be revealed, and that kept me on my toes even more than the building security.

"Was surprised as hell when I saw you wearing that uniform, Sam," she said finally. I noticed for the first time that she donned civvies - gray slacks and a white blouse - and not the standard dress uniform, as I was.

"I'm proud to show my colors," I said stiffly.

Gena scoffed. "Aren't we all," she remarked, gesturing towards the office's lone window. It was small, looking out onto the business park's courtyard, where a faded American flag flapped weakly in the hot breeze. "But there's certain parts of this country where a person can get themselves shot in the head by showing allegiance to them. I'm not willing to risk it. I'm surprised that you are."

I merely shrugged. What could I say to that? I knew the outfit was standout. I knew that was why the kids across the street had been looking at me like they had. I knew it was a risk, too. Gena's comment hadn't been flippant. Four months ago, Lieutenant Brett Adams had been shot, in the head and in broad daylight, during a morning jog through his peaceful suburban neighborhood. The culprit? Unknown. Adams's crime? He'd been wearing a t-shirt with ARMY emblazoned across the front. "Fine. Next time I'll come incognito, ma'am. I'll wear all black. Or, even better... I'll raid the nearest Adult store and come dressed like those women down on the corner of Fourth. No one will suspect a thing."

Gena grinned brazenly. "Hey, watch your mouth. Once you get past the leather and three inches of makeup, those are some respectable girls."

I smirked as she expected me to, but thinking about Adams had put me on edge again. I wanted to get out of here quickly, before something happened. I kept thinking about those kids. "Gena, the message you left said 'urgent'. How urgent are we talking about here?"

She sobered quickly. "Urgent enough for me to stop stalling," she admitted. "Sam, how long's it been since you moved from Colorado?"

I tried not to frown, but my keen sense of suspicion launched into action. "Four years. You should know that... it's in my file."

"Your file," said Gena, "is almost entirely classified. You should know that. Here I am a General, and I can't even get an uncensored copy," she added, feigning hurt.

"Well then, I guess you know all you need to know," I said flippantly.

She gave her head a warning shake. "So, four years. Four years since Cheyenne Mountain and all that very highly classified work for NORAD." Her voice dripped sarcasm. "That very hush-hush and need-to-know radar telemetry. Really, Sam," she said scornfully. "Did you and your mysterious COs really expect people to fall for that line?"

I shifted in my seat. "I would expect that you would recognize a cover story when you see one," I answered cryptically, figuring that it couldn't hurt.

Gena rolled her eyes again. "That goes without saying, although you're one of few people who would actually use the C-word." I raised an eyebrow. "Cover story," she explained, and I nodded. "Well, that's good. That we can be honest with each other. Tell me this." She leaned forward again, staring unflinchingly into my face. "Does the name Jack O'Neill ring any bells?"

Chapter 2

Was the name Jack O'Neill familiar? I must have gawked stupidly at Gena for several seconds before stammering. "Yeah, of course... yes."

She nodded knowingly. "You worked together then?"

"He was my... mysterious CO," I answered promptly, not missing the amused glint in Gena's eye.

"Right... your CO at the facility where you time and time again prevented tyrannical deep space radar telemetry from enslaving the population of Earth, right?" She raised one thin brow, and I realized that regardless of how much of my file had been encrypted, she'd nevertheless been able to find out... things. "How long's it been since you've seen him?" she queried, and I started wondering when this had turned into an inquisition about a part of my life that still stung to remember.

"Well, I left... NORAD four years ago, he left six months before me, but I still saw him on and off until I moved here. So..." I shrugged. "About the same amount of time. Four years." I hesitated, waiting for even to jump in with another question. When she didn't, I hesitantly asked, "Why?"

Gena tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, looking more perturbed than I had yet seen, than I had *ever* seen. I knew that she was human, and that she could and did feel uncertainty just like me, but she rarely ever *showed* it, and that was a crucial distinction. "He's gone missing," she said finally, simply.

"Missing?" I demanded, recognizing the panic in my voice and wincing. "Missing?" I repeated, this time in a more neutral tone. "What do you mean, ma'am? It's not exactly the same as going AWOL. He's retired. He has a right to go missing if he wants to."

"Actually," sighed Gena, drumming her fingers nervously against the desk only twice before she realized what she was doing and dropped her hand into her lap. "He doesn't." She frowned at my incredulous expression. "You aren't naïve, Sam. You know when it comes down to it, especially these days, rights go out the window where national security is involved."

"And you think it is?"

"We've been keeping tabs on him since he left... NORAD," she admitted, making the slight hesitation meaningful. "And for the larger part of the last four years, it's been deadly dull. But all of a sudden, he drops off the radar. Not even the FBI can find him."

"With all due respect, ma'am, the FBI couldn't find their ass with both hands," I reminded her.

"Too true." Gena shook her head wryly, reassuming control of the conversation with an air of nonchalance. "The fact is, even retired, O'Neill possesses a lot of classified information in the form of memories. Information about the US military... about deadly deep space radar telemetry..."

"So you asked me to come here today so you could find out if I knew where he was?"

"Not exactly," said Gena, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she changed tracks completely. "What do you know about Ilonka Waters?"

I knew that I flinched at the name, and I hated myself for it. Four years, and both their names still put a bullet through my heart. "Colonel Waters was assigned by the Pentagon as a liaison between them and us after Major Davis' accident," I said stiffly.

"I knew that much. What kind of personal involvement did you have with her?"

My tone was brusque, to say the least. "That would be none, ma'am."

"But Colonel O'Neill... did?"

This time, I couldn't keep staring her in the face and remain sane. I looked away, towards the small window, and beyond it the defeated flag. A dull ache had developed in my chest. So. Here was yet another reminder of how stupid the Colonel - Jack - and I had been. We'd been so focused, so committed on ignoring our feelings, pushing them aside for another day, that we hadn't considered the brief life span of forbidden love. One day we'd wanted each other with delicious impetuosity, and the next our time had passed and I was nothing but a fond if frustrating chapter in his life. God, it made me feel old, tired, and very jaded.

Ilonka Waters had been a near constant presence in our lives, in his. She'd been of equal rank, nearer his age and in no way under his command... and she'd been beautiful. The first time I watched them leave the base together I had realized two things: one, that the aching in the pit of my stomach wasn't heartburn -- it was mad, mindless, raging jealousy. And two... there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. "Yes," I managed to spit out. "I kept in touch with Dan-- Doctor Jackson for a while after leaving; he said they broke up after about two years together." And what a damned waste of time that had been.

Gena studied the glitter-encrusted paperweight on her otherwise empty desk. "So you didn't have any problems with her?"

Besides the oldest problem in the book? Maybe in history? The fact that she'd been in a relationship with a man that I'd had feelings for? Only I hadn't realized the full extent of those feelings until after he'd already been lost to me - that was the kicker - and I'd had too much pride to tell him so, even after the whole regulations problem was out of the picture.

Even now, after all the years living with the what ifs, one thing I didn't regret was going my separate way. If I'd ended up sitting on my hands for two more years, waiting him to get tired of Waters and hoping he would still be interested in me... well, we might have ended up together and we might not have, but I wouldn't have had any self-respect left to speak of.

It hadn't been Colonel Waters' fault that she'd been more available than me at the time, which was the only reason I was honestly able to respond "No" to Gena's question.

"Good," the General said perkily, touching a hidden button mounted under the lip of her desk. "Send her in," she demanded, obviously speaking into a hidden intercom, and I started wondering if perhaps I should have answered differently.

Chapter 3

Colonel Ilonka Waters hadn't changed over the past four years. Not a bit.

Well, maybe there was a little more gray threaded into her copper-colored hair, and a few more lines around her large brown eyes. But she still had the same gait, the same posture that was somehow professional and casual at the same time, the same unfailing energy, the same upswept hairdo... and I could have sworn she was still wearing the same color of lipstick. Her skin was still deeply tanned; I remembered that she was from a small town in southeast Texas and wondered if she still traveled back home to soak up the local UV during her off-time. The biggest difference was her attire; she'd gone incognito along with Gena, donning khakis and a lavender high-necked tank. I felt even more out of place in my dress blues, like a guest who'd been informed too late that the Halloween ball was *not* a costume party.

I watched in stony silence as Waters and Gena greeted each other like best friends separated for years, which could have been the truth for all I knew. Waters' full lips were constantly curving in that ever-ready smile, another throwback to my last days at the SGC. Everyone, Jack of course included, had found it charming; I'd never been able to trust someone who smiled that much. It wasn't natural.

It seemed even less natural when she turned it full-force on me. Things had never been blatantly hostile between us, but there had always been an undercurrent of tension that Daniel, Teal'c, and even General Hammond had picked up on. In fact, the only person who had seemed blissfully ignorant had been Jack O'Neill, which was fitting in a kind of pathetic way. The subtle antagonism now sprang up like a bad habit, like the past four years had never happened. I didn't know how Gena could not pick up on it - on my stony expression and the falter of that perfect smile - and how she could not realize that I had been lying. But even if she did notice, she didn't call me on it. Didn't say a word.

"I'll keep this brief," Gena promised, taking her seat. I'd never stood to begin with. And there were no other chairs in the office - no other furniture, actually - so Waters remained standing. "Ilonka, I explained the basic situation to you over the phone."

The Colonel gave a dependable nod, and I fought back a bristle of irritation. Gena couldn't tell me over the phone, but she could tell Waters? General Dirae claimed to know little of my time spent in Colorado, but promptly centered in on people from my past there? My normal, low-level anxiety deepened into a sudden and unshakable distrust. What kind of game was Gena playing here?

Of course, I had to admit that I hadn't been overly worried or distrustful until I'd set eyes on Waters.

"I know that Colonel O'Neill is missing," she recapped, looking down at me, actually addressing me in case I hadn't known that much. "And that given what he knows and how valuable he is to this country, it's important that we find out where he is."

I licked my lips and jumped back into the conversation, angry that the onslaught of memory - and, okay, jealousy - had taken my mind away from the subject at hand. O'Neill. Missing. "Is it possible he's been taken against his will?" I asked, wanting to purge myself of the most horrible possibilities first. Easier to think that he'd merely ducked out from under surveillance then to imagine him being killed by some wacko or even taken hostage by a foreign power.

Waters clasped her hands loosely behind her back, gaze now focused squarely on Gena. "That would be... unfortunate, ma'am," she said, as though this were something the General didn't already know. "But... the last place O'Neill was seen was his home in Colorado Springs, correct?"

"Right," said Gena gruffly, looking as though she hadn't appreciated my comment much. Well, I hated to always be the party pooper, I thought ruefully, but somebody had to say it. "He wasn't under constant watch, which in hindsight was foolish of us. But when we sent our boys in, there was no sign of a struggle. No physical evidence. No note. You can't have a murder without some kind of evidence. And a kidnapping doesn't do much good without notification of ransom."

"I also... heard that there were clothes and suitcase taken out of his closet," remarked Waters. The smile was gone now, of course, but the confident manner remained. The ease with which she spoke made it seem like she had the ability to walk outside right this minute, rustle around in the bushes for a few minutes, and come back dragging Jack by the ear.

I peered up at her curiously. "What about his car?"

"Still there," answered Gena. "Keys sitting on the kitchen counter."

Leaning back in my chair, I remarked, "And you don't think that points to any kind of foul play? Ma'am?" There was more than a hint of insubordination there, but now I was too peeved to care.

"He could have had someone pick him up," responded Waters. "He's practically a hermit but not quite. He still knows people. One of them might have given him a ride to the airport or train station."

Before I could answer, Gena Dirae lurched out of her chair and stood, rather stiffly, in front of it. "I said this would be brief," she repeated herself, looking as annoyed as I felt. "I have other matters to take care of today besides one missing man. I think the two of you have shown you're capable enough of that."

She opened a desk drawer and withdrew a small piece of paper, about the size and shape of a business card. She reached over and handed it to Waters. "That's your contact at the FBI. Local field offices across the country have been instructed to give you the help and the manpower you need... within reason at least. I know your opinion of the agency might be a little low right now," she added, winking at me with an air of levity that didn't exist, "but believe me, even inept help is better than no help at all. Usually."

With that she dismissed us, waving that we should leave, all with the manner of an affected queen. The last thing I saw before the pneumatic door shut behind Waters and myself was Gena, sitting back down in her chair, eager to get a start on whatever it was she did all day at an empty desk.

Chapter 4

"It's Ilonka."

I ignored Colonel Waters for a few moments. Maybe that wasn't such a great idea, career-wise, but again I was past caring. And the casual clothes made it easy to imagine that she was just another civilian off the street, someone I could easily scorn. "What, ma'am?" I asked finally, matching my tone of voice to my brisk pace. We were walking back to my car, across the dead, dry lawn, and all I could think about were those kids dressed in black, and Brent Adams. And how conspicuous I looked in my dress uniform.

But Waters either didn't understand the danger or didn't care. She reached out with one powerful hand and in a single motion both stopped me and turned me to face her. I knew my expression looked less than professional at that moment, but she didn't comment on it. All she said was, "No ma'am. No Colonel Waters. Gena didn't put us on this assignment so that I could play leader of a two person team. She wanted us to act like... partners. Equals."

"She told you this?" I asked, leaving off the "ma'am"... seeing as how she wanted to be my equal and all.

There was that damned smile again, easy and a little derisive. "I know Gena," she said, leaning forward, as though she was confiding in me. "So... it's Ilonka, okay? Ilonka and Sam?"

I wanted to cringe. How many times had I turned those two names over in my head, bashed them up against each other in my mind? Ilonka and Sam. Sam and Ilonka. Two women with the same opportunity, the same chance at happiness, with the same man. Sam OR Ilonka. And unfortunately for me, she had been the one to capitalize on that chance, the only one who could without throwing her entire adult life away. She had been the one who had put me in the position of deciding between my feelings and my duty, I thought. No one had made Jack and me feel that way about each other, but because of her things hadn't been able to run their natural course. Too soon I'd been forced to make the decision... and then the decision had been made for me.

Jack had made it for me. For both of us.

I couldn't blame him for wanting to move on with his life, with someone else... someone attainable. Someone beautiful and confident and constantly smiling. I hadn't been able to find fault with that choice then and I still couldn't four years later. But that didn't make it hurt any less, neither then nor now.

Ilonka and Sam?

"It's Samantha," I muttered, looking at the ground.

There was a note of surprise in Ilonka's voice. "I thought you hated being called Samantha?"

I felt the rage flare up again, although this time I was prepared for it. Who was this woman to think she knew so much about me? Just because I'd seen her, occasionally, on and off for a couple years? Just because she'd been sleeping with one of my best friends? That made her think she was an expert on me? Yes, I had hated being called Samantha, and I still hated it, but that was besides the point. This woman didn't know a damn thing about me and I was going to drive that point home. "Yeah, well, people change."

I turned, fully intending to keep walking and get out of the open, but Ilonka Waters didn't seem inclined. Christ, was she trying to get us shot? "You haven't."

The statement took me aback. My reply was stuttered. "I-I was just thinking the same thing about you. When you came into Gena's office. You looked like you hadn't aged a day."

Smile again. It was nauseating. "Yeah, that sarcophagus sure comes in handy. Joking," she added a second later, even though my reaction had been non-existent. "I do what I can to keep myself looking okay. But that wasn't what I was talking about. Looks. That wasn't what I meant. I meant you haven't changed inside. You're still the dutiful little girl, aren't you? The good soldier with the occasional rebellious streak." She raised an eyebrow and I stared back at her, my face utterly deadpan. "And you still despise me, don't you?"

That got me to blink. "I don't... despise you, ma'am," I said automatically, although I wasn't completely sure that that was the truth.

"Drop the ma'am... and don't lie to me, Samantha," Ilonka warned, more serious now than she had been in Gena's office. "I want to be your equal but I can't abide people lying to me. You hated me then and you hate me now."

I couldn't take this any more: the heat, the worry, and Waters' insane barrage of questions. I turned and began to walk again, and this time the other woman hurried after me. "You've got some strange ideas," I said sharply, not looking at her. "That hasn't changed either."

We reached my car, but before I could unlock the doors Ilonka Waters said something that stopped me in my tracks. "It was never about love, you know."

I froze with my finger on the key, looking up and catching the woman's gaze across the low roof. Her lips were pursed tightly together. "What?"

"Jack and me. I was never in love with him. Never deluded myself into thinking that I was. He was a great guy, he was fun, and he was wonderful in... in other departments. But that's all it really was, Samantha. Great. Fun. Sex. It was never meant to last. I was so surprised when you left... I thought you knew that."

I rested my hand on the roof of the car. The gray-painted metal was hot as hell against my hand, but I ignored it. I desperately needed to steady myself. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I finally croaked, looking at Ilonka, squinting against the reflection of the afternoon sun off the roof.

She seemed genuinely puzzled by my reaction. "I... I thought it would."

A bitter laugh escaped me. "You think you know so much," I accused. "But if you knew anything about me, you would know... you'd know that that's not the kind of thing I want to hear. That it was all just a game to you? Just a neat little distraction that went on for a couple of years? Because I can tell you, that's not how Jack saw it. He wasn't like that. If he was with you for that long it was because he loved you and because he wanted a life with you. And that when you left him it must have broken his heart. And that's supposed to make me feel better?" Ilonka looked like she wanted to respond, but I wouldn't let her. Already the fact that she was technically a superior officer had escaped my brain. "I don't know what you think you knew about Jack and me, but more than anything else he was my friend, and you hurt him. That doesn't make me feel better. That really, really pisses me off."

Abruptly I unlocked my own door, opened it, and slipped into the cramped, stifling confines. From the corner of my eye I could see Waters standing out in the sunlight, her door still locked. I half expected her to stalk back up to the Janus Building and demand to Gena that some horrible fate befall me. I half expected myself to start the battery and just drive away, away from all this. But instead I found myself unlocking the passenger's side door, and waiting until she was sitting beside me, buckled in, before starting the car.

Oddly enough, this woman - older than me, higher in rank, with a posture and aplomb I would never even approach - seemed stunned and ashamed by what I had said. It was amazing, at least to me, the way she sat there with her hands in her lap, staring down at them while I took the corners like a madwoman. She didn't speak until we were on the freeway, and even then she didn't have much to say. "I never really loved him. But I still care about him, and obviously you do too. Let's just... hold onto that, what we have in common. Caring about him. Finding him. Think you can manage that one?"

My response was made through clenched teeth. "I'm up to it if you are."

Chapter 5

Base camp was even less impressive than the Janus Building, but maybe I'd just been spoiled by my years at the SGC. The underground complex complete with cavernous rooms, a million beeping monitors, computers galore, a fully-staffed and -stocked facility at my fingertips... it hadd been my mansion. My batcave.

After that, nothing could compare. Not Washington, or San Francisco, or New York, or any of the other myriad places the Air Force had sent me. The same was true for my work. After traveling to other worlds on a weekly basis, fighting against impossible odds to ensure that six billion people could continue on with their ignorant little lives, no other job could compare. Certainly not being a virtual playboy bunny for the military, making speeches, giving endorsements, meeting with people who might just fork over that little bit of cash that this program or that program so desperately needed. Politicians. Millionaires. Even the odd foreign leader, although I was dismayingly monolingual.

The engagements I got set up with were all perfectly legitimate, perfectly proper, but I could never get past the sensation that I was being prostituted. After all, I wasn't being thrust into the spotlight because of my knowledge, and certainly not because of my experience -- most of that was classified, of course, which gave a lackluster appearance to what should have been an impressive service record. No, it was because I was 'nicer to look at than the average flyboy... or flygirl for that matter'.

Gena's words, not mine.

She'd been the one to get me the assignment. At the time, I had taken it gratefully. Who knew where I would have ended up if I hadn't? Even though the military's resources were almost non-existent, stretched to the very limits of its function thanks to budget cuts and base closures, the government and certain lofty generals still thought it we had a role as Earth's peacekeeping force. There were skirmishes and minor wars going on in all four corners, and we were so busy fighting everyone else's problems that our own, more domestic concerns were falling by the wayside. It was so frustrating.

At least I was safe. As safe as could be expected, anyhow.

But what about Jack?

Our initial base of operations was a Ease-Z-Nite motel room Logan, Virginia, a two-hour drive from the Janus complex in Washington. It had been a long, silent two hours, and all I could think about was how damn hard this was going to be and how I shouldn't have lied to Gena.

But would she have cared? Would she have agreed to drop me from this strange little mission, or to drop Waters? Or would she have simply looked at me with that hawk-eye-stare and implied that I get over my personal issues or find myself on the next flight to Israel or Kosovo or some other piece of hell on Earth?

I was a little glad that I hadn't even chanced it.

And I was surprised to find that once Waters and I started talking about case-specific things, it was easier than expected to put aside our own history.

Easier than expected, of course. By no means easy. Not when this 'case' had everything to do with our history.

Three hours after Gena Dirae gruffly dismissed us from her office, Waters and I had checked into our room at the Ease-Z-Nite in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, and had begun to plot out our strategy. By the time I'd showered and changed into marginally-safer clothing - white slacks and a light blue tank - the other woman had stacks of papers and manila folders strewn across one of the twin beds.

I carefully took a seat on the other bed, facing Ilonka Waters. "You seem to know more about this than I do," I observed.

She smiled. Of course. "You flatter me."

"No," I disagreed. "You were already involved with this, weren't you? Were you part of the surveillance on his house?"

All of a sudden Ilonka found a sheaf of papers - a cell-phone bill, I recognized - incredibbly absorbing. Any fool could tell that she didn't want to answer the question. And there was only one reason for that.

"Remember what you said?" I prodded her. "No lies?"

She didn't move a muscle, but in some small way her demeanor changed. Maybe she was finally starting to realize what 'partners' meant... that she would have to begin meeting me halfway here. "They had me on the team, just in case Jack started... acting up, doing something out of the ordinary, and they needed a familiar face to talk him down. It was probably the most boring assignment ever invented. He never did anything out of the ordinary. Although there were times where I almost wished he had, just so I would have an excuse to speak to him again."

"You two broke up on good terms?" I asked, and then cringed. I hadn't meant for my very first question to take a nosedive into personal, irrelevant territory. That was probably what Ilonka would prefer, of course. To keep me distracted with relationship talk so that she wouldn't have to divulge any more of her past than necessary.

"Oh, you know Jack," said Ilonka airily, finally looking up from the phone records. "All sweet reason and 'we can still be friends'. It was mutual, we both knew that we had grown past each other. Not to say it wasn't sad, but it was sad in a mature way. We didn't throw dishes or anything." She paused. "But at the same time, it was uncomfortable. I still haven't seen him since I left. Well, I've seen him, I just haven't talked to him."

"Ah." I cleared my throat, and nodded at her pile on the bed. "So, I take it that the manhunt has already begun?"

"If by manhunt you mean halfhearted investigation into all the usual suspects. His ex-wife and her family have all been questioned. They claim to know nothing but we're keeping Sara under close watch anyway. Phone bugs, the works. Just in case, of course."

"Of course," I said dryly.

"Our friends back at the SGC are of course notoriously hard to catch up with. The local FBI boy - King, Cline, something like that - was able to get a hold of Daniel, who was less than helpful. The same with George Hammond and General Dustan, so naturally we're having all three of them watched. So far, none of them have initiated any contact, and they even seemed genuinely surprised at our questions. Teal'c's only left the base once or twice since Jack vanished, and only for short trips to the grocery store."

I nodded stiffly, trying not to think about how she'd just referred to Daniel and Teal'c and the others as "our friends". If I thought about it, I would be forced to comment on it, and that wouldn't lead anywhere good. "What do you think happened to him, Ilonka?" I asked suddenly, even surprising myself. "I know Gena sneered at a few of my suggestions, but you... what do you think?"

She bit her lip thoughtfully, slipping off the bed, letting the papers slide off her lap, and began to pace across the small room. The place was notoriously ugly, decorated in shades of brown and orange. Paint peeled off the wall. The bed sheets were as soft as sandpaper. But arms crossed, gaze distant, Ilonka Waters seemed able to ignore all this - the continuously dripping bathroom faucet, twisted lampshade, the cigarette burns in the carpet - as she mulled over my question. Another habit of hers that hadn't faded over the years: the ability to go so deeply inside her own mind that you wondered if she even remembered that you were waiting for an answer. Something else I had disliked about her, along with the ingratiating smiles. No one should have to ponder for half an hour over iced tea or diet coke.

Chapter 6

"It's hard," she said after a while. "Sometimes I wonder if Gena had the right idea, you know? Picking two people to find him who were so close to him. Because... I want to think that he's just gone off on his own, on an extended vacation or something, and that in the next few days we'll be getting a call from the local office saying "Whoops, he's back, sorry for the scare". I remember what you said," she told me. "About the possibility of foul play. And... and you were right. Are right. There's a possibility. It's just... hard to consider."

A part of me felt real sympathy for the woman. The rest of me just felt... strange. She was a Colonel in the Air Force, for crying out loud. Sure she cared about him -- so did I! But at least I had thus far been able to pull myself together... for his sake. Ilonka... she seemed lost, maybe even a little hysterical. Confiding in me like I was a friend, maybe even like a sister. Telling me that her emotions were interfering with her ability to handle this mission.

So a part of my felt sympathetic, and a part of me just felt... weird.

Thank God she had never ended up in the field.

But here, now... what was this if it wasn't the field? No Gou'ald, maybe. No ability to sling automatic weapons around our shoulders and go marching boldly towards our goal. But it was dangerous out there.

"You need to get with the program," I said sharply. "You need to stop being afraid for Jack and just deal with the possibilities."

For a second, she looked a little less lost and a little more amused. Maybe even a sliver of annoyance, which I relished. "You're really getting into this whole 'equals' thing, aren't you?"

"The Russian government knows about the... the program," I continued. "Maybe they need him for some reason. Information. Non-technical information, anyway. Maybe they're planning on reopening the Gate and want someone there who understands the travel, understands the enemy."

Ilonka crossed her arms. "You really think Russians came to Colorado to kidnap a retired Colonel who's been out of the game for four years? And that they managed to do it without leaving any signs of a struggle, right out from under our noses?" Every word sounded more and more peeved, and I realized that her emotions here had to do with more than her lingering feelings for Jack. She'd been on that team, and by pursuing this theory I was effectively pointing out how she and her colleagues had failed. True, perhaps, but maybe not the best place to start.

"That's just one option," I said diplomatically. "Even though it would be strange to take someone hostage without leaving a random note, that's possible too. I assume you've checked all the local hospitals?"

"Every hospital and clinic in the state," she answered, still sounding tense.

I shrugged. "I suppose it's possible that he's just lying in a ditch somewhere..." I caught the disgusted look that Ilonka was giving me. "What?"

"God, you haven't changed, have you? You're still the cold-hearted, unfeeling little bitch that you always were."

I swallowed, uncomfortable with Ilonka's going on the offensive. "I'm a scientist," I said softly. "I look at facts. I try to keep emotion out of it, which is more than you can say."

"'It's possible that he's just lying in a ditch somewhere'," Ilonka repeated coldly. "That's not science, that's a sick mind. You said he was your friend, but you keep coming up with all these horrible, impossible scenarios. That's cold, Samantha. That's the reason you weren't worth waiting for."

It took a few seconds for her meaning to sink in, and in the end it didn't sink: it punched me in the stomach and left me nearly doubled over in pain. My insides had frozen, as though my blood had turned to an Arctic glacier, coursing sluggishly through my veins.

Ilonka's expression had turned to one of scornful pity. "He'd talk about you, sometimes. About how reliable you were. How trustworthy. How he was always so confident that you would be there in a crunch to back him up, whatever it took, hell or high water... no quirk of science or enemy platoon would stop you. He loved that about you. Said it was what made you such a great Second in Command. Funny, though... whenever he talked about friendship, it was Daniel and Teal'c's names he brought up, not yours. They were his emotional rocks, but you were a mountain. He could never find a handhold. He couldn't even see where Major Carter ended and Samantha, the human being, began. And now here I am, face to face with you, really, for the first time, and I see it so clearly... there is no human being. Just a machine. Smart, efficient, ruthless. I hope --"

But I had found my voice. "Who the hell do you think you are?" I exploded. "You think you know me, Colonel Waters? You don't know me!" Every word was uttered under pressure, terrible pressure; if I didn't say it, I would explode. God, had Jack really told her those things about me? That I was a good Second in Command but worthless as a friend? Had I really given that impression? "And I don't know you. Maybe I didn't know him, either. But the fact is that you and your buddy Gena seemed to think that I knew him enough to bring me in to find him. That's what we're supposed to be doing, Ilonka. Finding him, not rehashing our own problems. Finding him before he does end up in a ditch." My voice broke on the last word, and I hurriedly cleared my throat. "Deal with reality, Ilonka. Don't be mad at me for not running from it."

Her expression was stony. "The reality is that I know things you don't. Things I'm not able to tell you. All I can say is that all evidence points to him taking off on his own. No foul play. No one else involved. Now do you have any idea of where he might have gone? Any other property he mentioned to you that might not have shown up through official channels?"

I thought about her question for a second. And then, very deliberately, I said, "No. Not that I remember. Let me think."

"You think," said Ilonka with eerie softness. Her smile was gone, as though it had never existed. "I'm going to go take a shower. Be done thinking when I get out."

Chapter 7

Ilonka grabbed her bag and vanished into the bathroom, shutting the door securely but somehow not quite slamming it. Not until the lock engaged did I heave a sigh of relief.

She was insane!

Nuts... crazy... and obviously Gena had never asked Waters if SHE had a problem with ME. Apparently she did, although that was her problem, not mine. Certainly not mine. And what she had said had probably been lies - exaggerations at the very least - and so they shouldn't hurt me.

But oh, they did hurt.

The shower started to run. I dropped my head into my hands, sighing deeply. This wasn't going well, was it? Gena and Ilonka both seemed absolutely certain that Jack hadn't been the victim of foul play, that he had gone missing of his own volition, but how could they know that? How could they know that and not have the slightest idea of where he was?

That was why they had wanted me, of course. Not because they knew I was a good, reliable, trustworthy officer, someone smart, someone capable... they'd called me out of my normal circuit for the plain and simple reason that I had gotten further into Jack O'Neill's head than most people in the military. I would have said that the same was true for Ilonka, only her apparent negligence had been partly to blame for Jack's disappearance to begin with. This was her way of redeeming herself in the eyes of her superiors, trying to prove that she was too valuable to be sent overseas as part of Operation: Make Peace.

It would be hard to redeem herself when she had no earthly idea of what she was doing. Of who she was up against. Which was why she was relying so heavily on me. If I didn't give her a hand up, she would fail, and then she'd have to face the wrath of General Gena Dirae and some other not-so-benign officers.

And, maybe, so would I. They'd made it in my best interests to help her, excluding my own personal motivation to find Jack.

But I wasn't the only one who cared about him.

Daniel. If I were able to get in touch with Daniel, I'd doubtlessly have better luck cajoling him into helping us than Ilonka and her cronies. The same with Teal'c, and maybe even General Hammond. They might not trust her, but they would still trust me. I hoped. Trust me enough to help Ilonka, and help myself at the same time.

I looked around briefly for my duffle bag, and then frowned as I realized I'd left my bag in the bathroom when I'd taken my shower. My purse was lying at the foot of my bed, but both my handgun and cell-phone were in the duffle. There was no phone in the room, of course - too many cases of guests taking off with the accessories had led to the television and lamp being bolted to the wall, and the removal of the telephones. There was a line in the main office, but why bother when I'd seen Ilonka drop her cell, along with her sidearm, into her purse?

Glancing guilty towards the closed shower door, where the water ran ceaselessly, I moved to Ilonka's bed. Among the scattered papers was a woven, rust-colored handbag. I picked it up by the strap... and frowned.

Too light.

I pulled open the purse and rifled through. Hair ties. Lipstick. Grocery-store coupons, for crying out loud. But no phone. And no M9.

I dropped the purse back on the bed and looked towards the bathroom door. The water continued to patter against the shower stall, although I was becoming more and more sure that it was uninterrupted by a human form. My heart in my throat, I eased towards the back of the room. Close enough to the bathroom to hear the murmur of a female voice just under the rush of water.

I couldn't make out precisely what was being said, just random words that made little sense but still managed to chill me through and through. "...difficult... very frustrated... get her to understand the danger... no use... unhelpful... want me to remove her from this mission?"

I took a step back from the door, my stomach knotting. That statement could have been totally innocuous... but the tone, and the secrecy, and the gun missing from her purse - obviously transferred along with the phone while I'd been showering - said otherwise.

It had been a long time - too long - since I'd truly had to rely on my instincts, my gut feelings. For too many years I'd been counting on other people to tell me what to do: Generals to set my career path, itineraries to plan my every day down to the minute. But relying on your instincts is something you never really forget the importance of, and while it wasn't as easy as falling off the proverbial log, it was easier than I had expected. I took a step away from the bathroom door.

Too many secrets, starting with Gena's call, not the least of which were the rather intangible reasons that I was here. Too many suspicions, beginning long before I had even found out that Ilonka was to be involved.

Way too many bad things.

The water abruptly shut off, and I felt my guts seize up accordingly in the familiar fight or flight response. Stay? Hedge my bets? Risk it? If they had come to the conclusion that I would be useless on this mission... unhelpful... what would they do?

That all depended on who they were.

In seconds I had grabbed my purse from my bed, as well as an indiscriminate handful of computer printouts from Ilonka's. Who knew... maybe they would come in handy later down the road. Because this wasn't just about me anymore. It wasn't even about me and Ilonka, or me and Gena. It had to do with Jack, too: him and me, him and Ilonka. And maybe it even had to do with Daniel, Teal'c, General Hammond...

But most of all it had to do with Jack. Jack being missing. And so I still needed to find him. I needed to find them before they did.

Quickly but still with stealth, I opened the front door, stepped out, and shut it securely behind me. I kept waiting for the sound of the bathroom door being slammed open, to hear the sharp crack of bullets as they pierced the molding... but none came. It should have made me doubt my paranoia, but it did no such thing.

I ran across the parking lot, digging my keys out of my purse at the same time and casting the occasional frightened look over my shoulder. The motel's front office was right in front of me, and I could even see the manager through the small, barred-over window. He saw me too, but pretended not to. Whatever was going on, he didn't want to get involved and take the risk of getting shot.

I unlocked the door and fairly leapt into my car, starting the engine and thanking fate that I had been the one to drive us out here, that Ilonka would find it hard to follow me if she wanted to. Unless she did have a car here after all, or someone else to drive her, or someone else she could get in contact with... but that was getting into the area of 'broad-ranging conspiracy', wasn't it? I laughed nervously to myself as I pulled out of the parking lot.

I stopped laughing when I glanced at my rearview mirror and saw Ilonka bursting through the flimsy door of our room, almost tearing it away at the hinges. Even at that distance, I could still see the rage and hate... and something else... burning in her eyes as she watched me pull out into traffic. Swallowing, I put more pressure on the accelerator, putting on more speed than was wise for the mid-rush hour traffic that I was playing in. I had to get away, as far away as possible, leave no trace for Ilonka or anyone else to follow, had to get away... had to get help.

Whatever I planned on doing, I couldn't do it by myself.

There was one person I knew I could count on to help me, someone close by, not out of reach in Colorado. I could stop at a pay phone and call him, ask me to meet him, and I knew that he would.

Meeting him would mean going back into Washington. Back into the viper's nest.

But if I wanted to find Jack, I had no choice.

Chapter 8

My destination was the cereal aisle of a grocery store in a particularly non-descript corner of Malbrook. My friend and confidant was sitting in front of row upon row of high-sugar breakfast foods aimed at kids, and he appeared to be comparing Cocoa Krispies against Lucky Charms.

"I prefer the marshmallows," I said.

He looked up at me and smiled a grim sort of smile. Oddly enough, the bitter curve of his lips didn't unsettle me half as much as Ilonka's perpetually perky grin had. Maybe because I hadn't seen it as often, or maybe because it just seemed so much more genuine. "Well, me too. But don't you hate having to wait around for them to get all saturated with milk? I mean, they're no good out of the box."

I shrugged, coming closer. "Six of one. With Krispies, you have to eat it quick, before it becomes a big soggy brown blob."

"Ah, but the beauty of that is... instant chocolate milk."

I stopped in front of him, wanting to smile back but not finding it within myself. I hadn't observed a tail of any kind from Logan, hadn't witnessed anything suspicious in Dale City, but my instincts were still screaming at me like banshees. Telling me to keep moving, to keep looking over my shoulder, to trust no one. My instincts had apparently seen too many episodes of The X-Files.

"Paul... it's good to see you again," I said.

Paul Davis shook his head, dispensing with pleasantries, and replaced the cereal boxes on the shelf. "You sounded a little freaked out on the phone. What's going on?"

I gave a shaky sigh. "I don't know... a lot, I think, but I don't know."

He crossed his arms, looking thoughtful. "Calm down, Sam. You wanted a public place, I would say that this is pretty public. Now... what's going on, in ten words or less?"

I bit my lip, hooking my fingers into the belt loops of my pants. "I think the Air Force is trying to kill me."

There was no reaction from Paul for several moments. In fact, his face was so still and emotionless that I actually started to worry that maybe they had gotten to him first, that maybe he was even one of them. But then, like a machine kicked back into gear, his emotions spread out onto his face like a shock wave. "Oh... okay, well, that's ten words. Now why don't you expand on that a little bit. Who in the Air Force? Or are they routinely sending hit men after their most successful spokes-models now?"

I glanced over my shoulder again, half-expecting a man in black gear to come leaping over the instant coffee display at me. "Jack's missing. General Dirae had me brought in to help find him, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe they don't want me to find him after all... or maybe he has a perfectly good reason not to be found... I mean..."

"Sam," said Paul, rather sharply. "Who?"

Taking a deep breath, I expelled it to form a name. A hated name. "Colonel Waters."

There was a beat, in which Paul frowned and someone over the store speakers called for a price check on Spam. "Ilonka," he said flatly, turning away and starting down the aisle, towards the dairy section.

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I strolled along side him. "You don't believe me," I said flatly.

He didn't look at me. "Let's just say that I believed you a little more before you said that Ilonka Waters was trying to kill you." He hesitated, looked up, saw my stormy expression and replied with an incredulous gape. "Colonel Waters, of all people. Colonel O'Neill's ex. My replacement. Isn't that a little too convenient?"

"Convenient? You can't honestly believe that I made this up to get back at her?" I came to an abrupt stop in front of the yogurt case. "Not that... I would have any reason to want to get back at her... anything to want to get back at her for..." I ignored Paul's knowing leer. "In any case, it doesn't make sense. What would it accomplish? As it stands, it's my word against hers, right? So why would I lie? I'm telling you," I continued, lowering my voice as an elderly couple wandered by with their shopping cart rattling, "there's something going on here that just isn't right. It's like they were trying to pull something off but were thrown when I didn't play along."

"What did you do?" asked Paul, interested despite himself.

"I challenged them. I asked questions. Questions that they didn't have answers for. That they weren't ready to answer. Everything was too pat, too planned, and I don't think they expected me to notice that." Maybe it was because I had been out of combat situations for so long, or maybe because the people in charge of this little mission had never been in combat and didn't understand what it was like to have that sixth sense riding your shoulder like a guardian angel. "Ilonka said that she was going to go take a shower, but she took her cell phone and her gun with her into the bathroom. She called someone with the water running so I wouldn't hear her. And she told whoever was on the other end that I was being unhelpful and that I should be taken off the mission."

Paul crossed his arms. "And you didn't consider the possibility that she was just going to have you sent back to Tinsel Town?"

I shook my head. Ever since fleeing Logan, I'd been worrying, waiting for that little shred of doubt to sneak up on me, to slice into me and start to grow. That within hours I would feel like a sick, paranoid, insubordinate, jealous freak and have no other choice but to call up Gena and tell her about my overreaction. But with every passing minute I grew more and more certain that I was right, that my instincts were right, and that if I'd remained in that hotel room I would no longer be alive. "She was so eager for the two of us to be working together, to just put aside our past and find Jack, who she was so worried about. It's like she's a schizophrenic. One minute she's my new best friend and the next minute she's calling me a cold, heartless bitch. And you didn't see the look in her eyes when I pulled out of the motel lot. She wasn't just mad. She wasn't confused as to what I was doing. She was furious."

Paul looked down into his lap, thoughtful again, and I fell silent. He had just as many unresolved feelings about Ilonka as I did, although they came from a different source. Colonel Waters had been an employee of the Pentagon, a bit of an understudy to then-Major Paul Davis, despite the discrepancy in rank. After Paul's accident - his car had been rammed by a pickup on the way down from the mountain one night; the driver had been half-asleep and more than a little drunk - Ilonka had replaced him as the liaison between the SGC and the government in Washington. The move was standard and to be expected. But Paul's old job hadn't been offered back to him once he'd been released from the hospital. Waters hadn't even deigned to speak to him on the matter. The brass had all but spit on him when he'd asked, had offered 'a more fitting' assignment or early retirement. Bewildered, furious, and still adapting to life after the accident, he had taken retirement and moved back east to be with his father and sister.

Afterwards, I had felt - irrationally, of course - that he had abandoned me with Ilonka, who would soon begin seeing Colonel O'Neill on a more than casual basis. But after I'd left the SGC and moved to Washington, I'd started seeing Paul increasingly often, and I'd come to see that he was the last person I should be blaming for anything. He had been a victim... just as I was in danger of becoming now.

But I could understand his skepticism. Hatred for the military was running rampant, and it was easier for him to think that I had fallen prey to the propaganda than to consider the idea that I was right, that the Air Force, our Air Force, would sink to murdering one of their own. And I didn't have much to back my story up. Last but not least... he was right. Ilonka was too convenient. Everyone already had it in their heads that I hated her for being with Jack, and the one person I had brought my suspicions to was someone who had due cause to hate her as well. It almost looked like I was trying to set up some We Hate Ilonka club, when all I had really wanted was a sympathetic ear. And help.

"What did you want?" he said finally.

I leaned against a case of overpriced ice cream. "I think we have to keep in mind that, whatever's going on here, Jack may be a part of it already," I said slowly, hating the words, hating to hear my own voice speaking them. "But... I know him. Knew him. So did you. And I have a hard time believing that he'd have anything to do with something underhanded."

Paul raised an eyebrow. "So you mean it... you still want to find him?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

I paused, feeling as though I'd been dropped into the midst of an oral exam, annoying that my motives were being questioned, more annoyed that I didn't understand my motives myself. "Ilonka was driven to find him. I think she's up to no good. So it kind of stands to reason that wherever Jack is, he may be in trouble. He may not even know it."

"It's been four years," Paul pointed out, a little deviously.

I looked down at him, resolute. "It could be four hundred years, I don't care. He pulled my ass out of the fire too many times to count. He's my friend. If I can help him, I at least need to try."

For a split second, Paul looked genuinely pleased. He didn't smile with his lips, but with his eyes; a warmth shone through them that I had rarely seen before the accident, and hadn't witnessed since. Then he closed off again, and smiled his wry smile, and looked a little amused. "Then maybe you should go find him," he said simply.

I didn't smile either, but I came close. More than anything I wanted to embrace him, just to give him a simple, friendly hug to show my thanks, but I felt awkward. I always felt awkward, idiotically so, but I couldn't help it. It just seemed so odd and uncomfortable, having to lean over and stoop down to hug somebody in a wheelchair.

Chapter 9

Paul wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, but then again I'd hoped - by some strange miracle - that he would be able to point me at an exact address, and supply me with a precise reason for Jack's disappearance. Instead, we'd held a short powwow in the blistering late-afternoon heat of the supermarket's parking lot; I sat sidesaddle in the drivers seat while Paul parked his chair next to me. He ended up blocking a parking space, but no one driving through the lot told him to move. "Cripple pity," he told me grimly, looking down sadly at his paralyzed legs. "Comes in handy more often than you'd think."

We poured over the random sheaf of papers I'd grabbed from Ilonka's bed. Most of it seemed useless, but there was one boon: a manifest of all the places that Ilonka's team had ordered the FBI to keeps tabs on. Sara O'Neill's residence, Daniel Jackson's residence, and so on, as well as a couple bars I'd known he'd frequented. Even a couple I hadn't known about. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to get to the scene of this apparent 'crime' and go from here. Jack's house. The second viper pit. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Paul held the papers in his lap, pulling a pen out of a satchel on the side of his chair and scrawling down a telephone number. "This is a friend of mine who's from just outside of Denver, he's retired military and he's very trustworthy. You have any problems, you call him."

I nodded, feeling tired already and not looking forward to the long drive ahead of me. "Thanks, Paul. For being here... believing me."

He smiled his grim smile at me again. "Hey, I never said I believed you."

He was kidding and we both knew it, so I wished him well and climbed into my car. He moved his chair a safe distance away and gave me a short wave before I pulled out of sight. I made a mental note: if I found Jack in Colorado, I would send Paul Davis all the Lucky Charms he could possibly handle.

Near the Virginia border I pulled into a charge station, hooked up the car, and went to the bathroom to wash my face. The person staring back at me from the streaked, warped mirror looked less than sane, a pale shadow of who I'd been only that morning: the consummate, uniformed professional, willing to put her own feelings on the chopping block for the sake of her duty. It was who I had been for a long, long time.

Was I crazy? The fact that Paul had backed me up had definitely boosted my confidence, but I couldn't deny what I saw and what I knew to be true. Ilonka must have already called into Gena about my going AWOL. The local police, maybe even the FBI, would now be on the lookout for some rogue, wacko Air Force officer. And why? Because I had overheard someone and had been suspicious? Because even after all this time I was so fiercely loyal, foolishly loyal, to my own team? Not because I had any hope that Jack and I could find common ground again - the time for that had come and gone - but because if I told myself he was in peril, and I told myself I could save him, I was telling myself that I could right some wrongs. In my own mind, at least.

I got back into the car, waiting for the charge to finish, and pulled Ilonka's papers out of my glove compartment. Shuffling through them, I smiled, wondering if she'd missed them yet. Wondering whose phone number Paul had given me. I flipped to that page.

(218) 555-4324

It was strange - I didn't remember 218 being a Colorado area code - but even stranger was the small illustration beneath the number. It was done in blue pen, the same color as the phone number; Paul must have drawn it.

It was a simple picture of a fish.

Fish. I mouthed the word.

**Nothing wrong with that is there? Couple of co-workers, friends if you will, fishing. It'd be fun.**

That was impossible...

**Still going fishing?**

**Yep. Still staying here?**

**Yeah. I think I've had enough relaxation for a while, Sir.**

I scrambled for one of the papers. The list of places the FBI had staked out.

**Carter! You finally ready to take me up on that fishing trip?**

It couldn't be. Of all the places on the list, the cabin up in Minnesota was nowhere to be found. How was that possible? How could he have hidden the property from the FBI, and how could Ilonka not have suspected that he would be there?

As the station signaled that my charge was finished, and I removed the equipment from under the hood, I rethought my decision to go back to Colorado Springs. Minnesota wasn't exactly a minor detour. It would take me at least a full day's driving, and I still wasn't sure as to exact location. Or was I?

Chapter 10

There had been a day... not the last day I had seen Jack, but the last day I had seen Colonel O'Neill. The day his latest and final retirement became official, the last day he had set foot in the SGC. A milestone, but of course none of us tried to think about it like that. There was something infinitely more attractive in denial, in believing that this was a day like any other. Let it hit me when we stepped into the locker room to gear up and found the Colonel's things replaced by some stranger's.

Being that it was a day like any other, I had sequestered myself in my lab over my latest project: an artifact brought back from P7S-656, constructed out of a naquada compound that looked as though it could be even stronger than the pure mineral. I shut the lab door to leave only a crack of light leading in from the hallway and launched myself at my microscope, filling my mind with thoughts of mineral composition, atomic structure, and half-life ratios in hopes of driving out thoughts of lost companionship, lost friendship, and dead dreams. As I had always been good at deluding myself, I was doing a pretty fair job of it until I looked up to see Jack O'Neill standing on the other side of the table.

I hadn't even heard him come in. I blinked but didn't start; stared but said nothing. Even though the day was almost over, he still wore his BDUs, wore them comfortably, wore them as though they were a part of him. He had his arms loosely crossed, not like he was annoyed or angry, but like he was holding the familiar fabric against his skin as a toddler holds a favorite blanket.

For a long time, neither of us said anything. For too long we had used hollow words to fill these awkward spaces. Now, not only would the words not come, the silence didn't seem as uncomfortable as I remembered. Maybe I was already getting nostalgic for times past. Times that would all too soon be past. My hands drifted down to the artifact and brushed lightly against its raised edges, but my gaze seemed permanently affixed to his. The perpetual sense of transgression, that constant companion, was still there: an oily film over the surface. The surface, however, didn't matter so much any more. For just a moment, we glimpsed what was beneath that surface: refreshing, unspoken honesty... cool tenderness... raw desire. It was deep, beautiful, touching. But it was only a taste. A taste of something we could never have.

In tandem, we raised ourselves to the surface, felt the oil slick against our faces, and felt the emptiness. And we tried to fill it.

"Sorry if I scared you," said the Colonel.

"You didn't," I assured him, not knowing if that was the truth. "I guess I was kind of... engrossed."

His smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I guess after today you're not going to be spending so much time being engrossed... what with all the paperwork that comes with being a team leader."

I heard the pride in his voice, lacing the edges like icing, and felt a tingle of excitement despite myself. "Little does General Hammond know," I said, knowing that I was flushed, "my current project includes finding a way to actually add more hours to the day."

Another shallow smile. "If anyone could do it, you could."

My half-hearted laugh came out sounding more like a strangled cry for help. I lowered my head. God, I was going to miss this: this unwavering faith. The demand for answers, the call for a five-minute-miracle. Maybe most wouldn't have cared for his 'Give the problem to Carter; she can do anything' attitude, but I worked best under pressure and I was warped enough to take 'she can do anything' as a compliment of the highest order. He expected such great things from me with such easy assumption that it made me believe creating miracles wasn't so far out of my reach. It had been nice, having someone put their instinctive trust in me.

And now that was just going away. Realizing that I had been quiet for too long, I lifted my head and murmured, "A 48-hour day wouldn't be enough to make me happy."

Slowly, the Colonel uncrossed his arms and braced them against the table. "What do you think happiness is, Sam?"

My laugh was too bitter and too wet-sounding to be believable. "Deep question, sir--"

"Jack," he corrected me quickly.

Another tingle passed through me, but this one left only pain in its wake as I saw another piece of my delusion erode away. "Jack," I agreed, the name feeling foreign on my tongue. "I suppose... happiness is more of a symptom than an actual thing. It's going to bed with a smile on your face and waking up looking forward to whatever the day has in store for you." I grimaced, realizing that I sounded as though I was quoting out of a Hallmark card... and wondering why a man who was in what seemed to be a pleasant long-term romantic relationship was asking me about happiness. "I think it's more than just being content with you life," I found myself saying. "And it can't just be one thing that makes you happy. Maybe... it's being in sync with the universe." I bit my lip, feeling foolish and knowing it didn't matter in the long run. "What do you think?"

Colonel... Jack's expression was absentminded, even distant, definitely pensive. His eyes seemed to stare right through me, and for a moment it looked as though he could actually be contemplating what I had said. "I think happiness," he said slowly, "is fishing."

The ludicrousness of the statement brought a genuine - if short-lived - smile to my face. "Teal'c got you that shirt," I chided.

He wasn't smiling, not with his mouth, but Jack's eyes were full of laughter... full of life. "Really," he said. "I mean it. What more is there to happiness than peace and quiet, beauty all around you, a cold beer next to you, and a fish-less pond in front of you?"

"What about discovery?" I teased.

His lips twitched. "There are other kinds of discovery."

I fought back a blush. Surely he didn't mean it like that. "Adventure?" I said quickly.

"Ditto." He took his hands off the table, standing straight again and shoving one hand into his pocket. Once again my guts were full of nervous energy, only this time it wasn't butterflies: it was wasps dancing around down there, causing my hands to clench, causing my eyes to sting. But instead of briskly making his good-byes, he withdrew his hand from the pocket. In it was a slip of paper, and he passed it across the table to me. I was careful not to accidentally brush against his skin as I took it from him.

On the piece of paper was an address. Directions to it. And a phone number.

"After that little Osiris incident, Hammond suggested that I get some kind of means of communication up there, for emergencies. It's pretty remote, so the phone's a satellite, but..." I looked up at him, stricken, and he froze. "What?"

"Why are you giving this to me?" I asked. I hadn't meant to sound so curt, but the pressure within me was building like an emotional volcano. Had he broken up with Waters? Was he trying to tell me something?

"Because... I didn't come here today to get my 'bon voyage'. I'm not going anywhere, Sam. Yeah, things are changing... they have been changing... but I still fully expect to see you from time to time, to be kept at least somewhat in the loop. Same for Daniel and Teal'c. Maybe I can't make it an order anymore, but I can whine pretty well."

He wanted me to laugh, but I couldn't. Wouldn't. I stared at the paper again, wondering if he had given one like it to Daniel and Teal'c, as he was implying. "Maybe you should give this to Ilonka instead," I said quietly, hoping that it would hurt him... just a little. Hoping that he would correct me, tell me that he never planned on seeing Ilonka Waters again... but he didn't. No surprise there.

"You're not Ilonka," he said in a similar, subdued tone. "And Ilonka isn't you. I always thought we were friends, Sam."

"We are." But we could have been more, you idiot, I inwardly raged. Nearly six months of dealing with Waters' existence had not brought me any closer to acceptance. Jack was my friend, and that was something I would always treasure and that I would not, could not, ever regret. But we could have been more, and it could have been better. Instead of saying 'see you soon' we could be saying 'see you tonight'. God knew I had never wanted to act like a jealous... female in front of him, for more reasons than the 'commanding officer' one. Still, while I didn't actually dislike Ilonka, I resented her role in my life and in his, and Jack wasn't blind. He wasn't stupid. He knew.

But although I reached over to hand the paper back to him, he didn't take it. Finally looking away from me, he put both his hands back into the pockets and circled the table towards the door. Not looking at him, only seeing him out of the corner of my eye, I let my hand fall to the tabletop, the paper still folded between my fingers.

As he passed my chair, Jack stopped. He looked at me, like he wanted to say something, and moved closer, like he wanted to give my arm a friendly touch. But he did neither. Instead, balancing himself against the table with one hand, he leaned forward and placed a quick, chaste kiss on my cheek. Then he was gone, walking quickly. Not even a mile-thick wall of my new uber-naquada could have kept him in that room a second longer.

I had wanted to crumple up the slip of paper and throw it away, or maybe use the torch to burn it to ashes before the address had a chance to etch itself indelibly into my mind. But I did neither. I put it in my pocket, and when I changed to go home I transferred it to my wallet. Just in case, I had told myself. Just in case.

In case of this?

Now, hunched over inside my car, still sweltering even though the sun was swiftly being pushed to the horizon by the coming of night, I reached for my purse and tore through it. Did I have the same wallet now that I'd had back then? Could it have fallen out at some point? I pulled out credit cards and ID cards and library cards, searching every nook and cranny and fold and pocket for that small piece of paper.

And then, like a beacon, like buried treasure, I saw it. The corner sticking up from behind the checkbook partition. Biting my lip, I pulled it out.

For four years I'd kept it, not even remembering, not even knowing until now how important it could possibly be.

The phone number at the bottom of the page, the one for Jack's satellite phone, was the same number Paul had written next to the picture of the fish.

Chapter 11

I drove all night. Sleep was not for me. Once more, my ability to stay awake and focused longer than most people came into use.

As morning dawned, it saved my life.

I had just reached the midway point of my journey, crossing into Illinois; I would clip the northeastern-most corner on my way up to Minnesota. For the fifth time since leaving Virginia I stopped at a station to recharge the car. For the fifth time I swiped my card, breathed a sigh of relief as the payment went through, and prayed that the ever-faulty database would be down and they wouldn't be able to track me by my purchases. At one point I would probably need some new clothes, too.

I used cash to buy a double latte and sipped it by the station vender, waiting for the ping that would tell me the charge was done. I avoided the eyes of others just in case the FBI were smarter than I thought and were actively seeking me out. I hadn't noticed any wanted posters in the vender, but you never knew what people had seen on TV.

Draining my latte, I tossed the empty paper cup... and I saw them entering the station. A black new-model Ford with tinted windows. Even the front windshield was opaque. What that meant was pretty damn obvious. Fibbies.

The FBI car pulled up to a charge station at the second of the three banks, on the opposite side from my car; there were several other automobiles blocking it from view. The owners of those cars cast dirty looks at the black Ford and, I imagined, checked to make sure the handguns tucked inside their glove compartments were fully loaded. Hatred for the government was not directed solely at the military. A half-dozen pairs of eyes narrowed in suspicion as a single man - dressed in black slacks, a white shirt, and sunglasses - got out of the car and started hooking up the charge equipment under the hood.

The latte congealed in my stomach as I saw the situation unfold with the same terrible elegance of a battle against a bunch of crotchety Jaffa. The agent - as well as his friends still inside the car - didn't know exactly where I was, but they appeared to be at least scouting the area for me. They knew what I looked like, and they probably knew what my car looked like. I had to get out of there... but I couldn't. The fibbies' Ford was parked in the middle bank, while my car was past them, on the far side. I would have to pass right under their noses to get to it, and as inept as the FBI was, I knew there was no way they could miss me.

In desperation I scanned the customers lined up at the nearest bank... and found possible salvation in an unlikely place: a young man, twenty-something, with short brown hair and the unforgettable 'uniform' of black on black that I had learned to loathe. He leaned against the front bumper of his car as it charged, arms crossed, and I knew he was watching the agents' car out of the corner of his eye.

Could this be it? Could this really be my way out? And could I do it?

Stupid question. Of course I could do it. My life might depend on it.

Waiting until the fibbie's back was turned, I left the vender behind and sidled up to the kid's car: a dark blue BMW. He noticed me almost immediately, turning his head minutely in my direction. I stood where I hoped that his larger form would block the agents in the car from seeing me.

"Hey," I said, softening my voice, clutching my purse against me in what I hoped was a pathetic manner. Desperation was 'in' these days. "I need your help," I told the kid in a hushed tone.

It immediately caught his eye. Today's youth liked to pretend that they were jaded and unconcerned with the problems of others, but people were enduringly nosy; if that wasn't true, Jerry Springer wouldn't still be on the air. "Help?" he repeated. For all his ripped black jeans and greasy black tank top, he had an almost intelligent face. I wondered if he would go to college in the fall, if this was just his summer 'moonlighting', and resigned myself to the idea that it probably wasn't so. That this was just one more wasted life, or would be. Before I could answer, he looked over his shoulder and back at me, eyebrows raised. "The pig-dogs after you?"

Hell... maybe honesty was the best policy after all. "Yeah," I said in a conspiratorial murmur. I tried to look nervous, like a hunted rabbit. It wasn't hard.

As I had suspected, the kid had no great love for law enforcement. Of all the people here, he was probably the least likely to alert the agents to my presence. Instead, he scowled. "Those bastards. What they after you for, babe?"

Babe? I fought the urge to roll my eyes. "Not much," I said, which was true, at least as far as I could tell. "Just... stole a car." Which would be the case very soon, if it wasn't now.

The kid looked me up and down... and then up and down again. "Aren't you a little old to be stealing cars?" he asked, a ghost of a smile on his face.

Old? I almost told Junior to kiss my ass but thought better of it at the last minute. "Not as old as I look," I said, playing the role of the pitied downtrodden street-chick. "Had a hard life. Stealing a ride's just part of that, you know?"

Junior grinned suddenly, gesturing down at the BMW. The style was old - it looked like it might have been one of the first fully electric models - but it was clean and seemed to be in good condition. "Don't I know it. Picked up this baby in some uptown rich-kid neighborhood in Louisville."

Well, that explained that.

Slowly, I slipped my hand into my purse. "Well, buddy," I said softly. "I've got a problem. I'm kind of in an emergency. I've got another friend north of here I've got to save from the... uh, pig-dogs, and with them looking for me I won't be able to do it in my current vehicle."

The kid looked a little taken startled, which was refreshing. "Well I was headed north, but..."

I took a step closer. "I don't think you understand, babe. I'm not asking for a ride, I'm asking for your ride."

His brown eyes finally dropped to my purse. "What, you got a gun in there or something?" he asked in a mildly tremulous voice. Yes, the kiddies liked to talk tough, but they disintegrated at the first sign of trouble. "Bet you're bluffing."

"How much you want to bet?" I asked, taking another step. "How about your right kidney?"

Without another word, the kid took off towards the vendor at a sprint. I was reasonably sure that he wouldn't turn me in, that his plans included nothing more than hiding behind the coffeemaker until he was sure I was gone. Laughing to myself, I took my car's keys out of my purse and dropped them on the ground. Let it be a trade.

The kid had abandoned the keys to his car on the hood; I grabbed them and wasted no time sliding in behind the wheel.

Ilonka's papers were still in my car, but I had the address in my wallet and I hoped that it would be all I needed. And maybe, if they ever came across Junior in a car pilfered from Dale City, Virginia, the presence of the papers would send them a message. Would send her a message.

As I pulled out of the charge station, I cast a circumspect glance towards the FBI car, wondering if there was a copper-haired woman riding within, wondering if she was smiling now.

Chapter 12

"Welcome to Elysia, Minnesota"

The simple hand-carved sign, stuck into the dirt at the side of the road, was a beautiful thing to behold. Not even the Holy Grail could have looked as wonderful and impossible as that sign did at that moment.

Of course, I reflected, the only reason I had made it this far was because of the ineptness of law enforcement these days.

I had stopped by the side of the road to admire the sign and stretch my legs, but I quickly climbed back in and continued on my way. The area was desolate, and it was definitely giving me the creeps. If my nemesis showed up now, there would be no convenient charge station to hide behind. And I would be damned if I had made it this far only to be stopped now.

Since leaving Illinois I had stopped only a handful of times, and only on two occasions had I tarried for more than fifteen minutes in any one place. Once to sneak into an RV camp and use the bathhouse shower to wash up for the first time since ditching Ilonka. Once to duck into a crowded shopping mall and buy some new clothes - blue jeans and a kelly-green T-shirt - something clean, something they wouldn't know that I was wearing. Thoughtfully, Junior had left about a hundred dollars in cash under the driver's seat for me. Very generous of him, I mused, feeling more human then I had in some time.

I pulled back onto the road and into Elysia, home of the illustrious fish that were that big. The BMW's floorboards was littered with fast food wrappers - I had made my share of trips through drive-thru's - but the air was slightly cooler here than in Washington and I was happy.

While driving I had begun to wonder: why hadn't Ilonka included Jack's cabin on her list of places to stake out? Why hadn't she mentioned it to me at the motel? Had she had some ulterior motive in keeping the information from me, or was the answer much simpler than that? Or was it possible that she had never known about the cabin to begin with?

It seemed to be an impossibility. Jack had always been going on about up north: about the quiet and beauty... and fish. He'd taken Teal'c up there once, although Teal'c had professed that the experience had been too traumatic to discuss. He had constantly been inviting people up there: my teammates, General Hammond, my father, Thor and a handful of other aliens, and myself... although as far as I knew, I was the only one he had asked more than once. Could he really have kept the cabin a secret from Ilonka for the two years that they had been together? More importantly, why keep it a secret from her when it had been common knowledge to the rest of his friends?

Maybe Ilonka had known about it after all, I worried, and the address hadn't been on her list for some diabolical reason. Maybe it was a trap, and they were all waiting up there for me, waiting for me to walk into the spider's parlor, just waiting...

For all my spy tactics and running around, I hadn't thought - or allowed myself, for that matter - to speculate on what the core of this whole issue was. Before, my gut feelings had seemed more important than reason, but as I closed the gap between myself and my goal, I found that the questions would no longer be ignored. If Dirae had been truthful with me, and Jack had vanished... and if what Ilonka had implied was also correct, and he had voluntarily gone into hiding... then why? Was he afraid for his safety, as I was, either from the Air Force or other powers unseen? Russia, maybe? Or was it nothing like that - did he just want to escape from surveillance in Colorado? - in which case the cabin would be the perfect retreat.

Of course, if both or either Gena and Ilonka had lied, I was going in completely blind. This was only an educated guess, of course, supplemented by an unerring gut feeling.

And when you do find Jack, I asked myself, what then? Do you honestly think that when the two of you see each other, all of life's problems are just going to fade away? That saccharine music will start playing in the background and everything will turn soft and blurry around the edges? No, even if I was right in my hunch and found Jack holed up in his cabin or sprawled out across the dock, nothing would change. I would still be a hunted woman, on the run from the FBI and Air Force and who knew what else. The only way I could possibly save myself would to bring them what they wanted - Jack - and I couldn't do that. I couldn't put myself and my own meaningless life above his safety.

Strange how that instinct to protect him was still alive and kicking after all these years.

The directions to the cabin lay flat on the dashboard; I double-checked the name of the next street I had to turn onto, and glanced nervously at my charge gauge. It was hovering precariously around the 0. If I didn't find Jack, and if he didn't have some kind of transportation, I would be marooned out here in the boondocks. Which really wasn't my fault; I had hit the last station in civilization, a couple hours back, but it hadn't been enough to get me to the northernmost extremities. These roads hadn't been laid out with consideration for electric cars. Gas, definitely, and maybe a good hybrid, but not what we were forced to drive these days. Combined with the utter lack of traffic and only the occasional road sign and call box, that knowledge gave the impression that I had driven straight off the map, or into a post-apocalyptic alternate universe.

I pulled off the paved street onto a narrow dirt road; at the corner was a small spray-painted sign: Abydos Way. Cute, I thought. Real cute.

And then my car died.

Sighing hugely, I used the last of the vehicle's momentum to pull off the road, down into the shoulder and behind a clump of maple trees. If someone was actively looking for it, it wouldn't be hard to find, but every little bit helped. Or so I told myself. I squished my dirty pants and tank top, as well as the directions, into my purse, retrieved my sunglasses from the outer pocket, locked the BMW's doors and started up the road. According to Jack's directions, 'Abydos Way' would dead-end at the cabin, so all I had to do was keep walking for the next three miles with the afternoon sun beating down on me.

With a flourish I slipped on my glasses, straightened my shirt, and clambered off the shoulder and back onto the deserted dirt road. With only a short glance back at the main road, I slung my purse onto my shoulder and set off

Half an hour later, I was starting to get pretty sick of trees, and was fervently looking forward to finding this infamous lake of Jack's. I was hot and dirty and I cursed myself for not thinking to buy some bottled water at the last station. Four years ago a little walk down a tree-lined road would have been no big deal, but it was more physical labor than I'd done in a while. I still kept in relatively good shape - in my line of 'work' these days, I had to - but looking pretty for the cameras wasn't the same as saying fit.

But I was almost there, I could feel it. The terrain had changed a little; the shoulder on each side of the road had slowly risen, going from being street level to almost waist high, and the trees had become taller and more stately. I strolled along beside them, thankful for the shade.

I was fairly sure that I had walked the three miles - in fact my feet were telling me it had been much further - and had surmised that the cabin's drivewayy must be just around the next bend in the road... when I saw it. Perhaps 'saw' wasn't the right word. I caught the barest glimpse out of the corner of my eye: a tiny sliver of white light on the right-hand shoulder, amidst the greenery of the trees.

Frowning to myself, I crossed over to that side of the road and pulled myself up onto the little knoll, at the place where I had seen the light. Finding nothing, I lowered myself down onto my haunches, thought for a second, and then on impulse scooped up and handful of dirt and tossed it towards the bottoms of the trees.

Now I could see it clearly: a thin yellow-white laser starting at the trees and extending out across the road, invisible to the naked eye when not interrupted by matter. A motion detector, and a fairly sophisticated one from the looks of it. This wasn't the red-light home kit that you could order from any junk catalogue, the kind that was highly visible and went whooping at the slightest movement. This kind was probably set to pick up on only large objects - vehicles or human bodies. Thankfully I'd seen it before I'd walked into it, although finding the thing was by no means encouraging. It was a trap after all.

Careful not to contact the laser, I pulled back some of the undergrowth and branches away from the nearest trees. Affixed to the base of one was the emitter... but it was like no laser emitter that I had ever seen. Where was it from?

"It's Asgaard technology," said a voice, shocking me with its nearness. With a gasp I spun back around towards the road and found myself facing the business end of a souped-up semi-automatic. The man holding his finger on the trigger looked somewhat surprised when he saw my face, but didn't move a millimeter. "And," added Jack O'Neill, "you already tripped two of them further up the road."

Chapter 13

"J-Jack," I stammered, feeling ridiculous: stooped over on the ground, dirt on my hands and jeans. The gun aimed directly at my heart demanded my attention, but I couldn't keep myself from staring at him. If Ilonka had barely aged since our SGC days, and if, according to her, my personality hadn't changed much, then Jack had found himself a good sarcophagus or, barring that, a cryofreeze chamber. His salt and pepper hair was a little saltier now then it had been, but his eyes were still bright and quick, and he handled the weapon with timeless familiarity. He might just have stepped out of the Stargate from some other world, only his clothing had changed from battle uniform to blue jeans and a gray shirt. He looked capable, healthy... and not exactly happy to see me. His eyes actually narrowed as I spoke his name.

Jack backed away a few paces but didn't give the slightest indication of standing down and greeting a long-lost friend. "Down," he said sharply. "Onto the road."

I slid down off the shoulder, keeping eye contact the entire time, trying to communicate my own good will through ESP and trying to read his own mind at the same time. Didn't he remember who I was? Was this it, the reason he had vanished? Some kind of amnesia?

"On your knees," Jack barked dispassionately, circling me like a shark. "Lace your fingers behind your head."

Silently I did as he ordered; my legs had begun to go weak and watery anyway. This certainly wasn't the reunion I had expected. The paranoiac in me - a part of my mind that had been getting plenty of airtime lately - began to panic. What if this had all been some kind of elaborate plot to get me out here? Gena, Ilonka, Paul... even Junior at the charge station... all part of the same conspiracy. Sure, it seemed out of the realm of logical thought, but so did Jack's behavior.

He circled me once more, staring intently at something only he could see, and then he stopped in front of me. The gun, strapped across his body, dropped from his hands to his side, but I knew how quick he was and as a result I didn't budge. I just stood there on my knees, hands awkwardly positioned behind my head, staring up at him through my shades. After a moment's pause he reached forward and pulled the glasses off my face. I blinked; everything seemed unnaturally bright. And his expression seemed more uncertain than before.

"Get up," he said finally.

Letting my annoyance show, I climbed back to my feet and let my arms fall. "Do you treat all your guests like this?" I asked.

He stared blankly at me for a few seconds before answering. "Most of them, yeah." He looked quickly down the road, in the direction I'd come from. "How many more did you bring with you?" he queried.

A strange shuddering breath of relief went through me. He wasn't on their side... of course he wasn't. But he thought that I was! I almost wanted to laugh at him, but I didn't think that would go over well. "If I did it right, none," I answered. "I think my car might have been bugged, but I, well, traded it in for another model back in Illinois. I left it back at the end of the road, on the shoulder, behind some trees."

Still I found no discernable expression, and I had been a student of his subtle mood shifts for many years. "You could have a tracer on you," he said blandly.

Now I did laugh, and it took him by surprise. I held my arms away from my side, chuckled darkly, and asked, "What, do I have to strip to prove it to you?"

There. The slightest glimmer of amusement in his eyes. He blinked and then it was gone, but I still felt a sense of triumph: I had reached him, however briefly and in whatever small measure. For some reason, I realized, his trust in me had faded -- either with time or coercion or some other unthinkable way. I could win it back - I had to - but I would have to do it in the same way I had caused that small glimmer: in small steps.

"I'll take a raincheck," he said flatly, tucking my sunglasses into his shirt pocket. "Besides, I know you read the same article I did, Carter. They can put those suckers just about anywhere these days, including implanting them subcutaneously."

I wasn't sure which threw me more: the fact that my body itself might be bugged, or the fact that Jack had actually used the word 'subcutaneously' in a sentence. Or the confirmation that he knew who I was. I gave a small smile. "I don't know how else to reassure you... whoever you think I'm working for, I'm not. In fact, if I'm right, I've been running from those same people for the last day and a half. Listen, Jack, I think the best thing to do right now is just to sit down... somewhere... and talk. We really need to talk," I repeated, intently, noticing how he'd blinked when I'd used his name. I'd only allowed myself to really think of him as Jack after leaving Colorado, so it wasn't something he'd heard often. "Now if you don't trust me, we can do it right here. But it's very important."

Hesitating only for a second, Jack shrugged, like it didn't matter one way or the other. "If you've led them here, a few hundred feet won't matter in the long run," he muttered, gesturing in front of him, towards the bend in the dirt road. "You first, Madame."

The cabin wasn't exactly what I had pictured, either in my own imagination or from Teal'c's accounts of horror. It was small, simple: wood with a stone foundation and chimney; the small stone patio had an overhanging roof, and was crowded with hand-carved chairs and tables. As we came up the drive I could see the dock protruding out into the lake, and the shore that surrounded it: patchy grass but a great deal of plant life, smooth stones at the water's edge, and in the distance a plethora of beautiful green-gray trees ringing the small lake like a natural fence. The sun was just beginning to set behind one especially tall crop and it did strange, beautiful things to the still water.

And as Teal'c had promised, there were a lot of bugs.

We stood in front of the porch for a moment or two as I took in my surroundings, the lake especially; Jack didn't seem to be in any great hurry, and actually as I looked back at him I found that he had been looking, not at the scenery, but at me.

"Uh, let's go inside," he muttered.

Chapter 14

Before my eyes could even adjust to the dim light, Jack had his hand on my shoulder and was guiding me through the entryway and into what looked like a living room. Squinting, I could make out the rectangular shape of a small television, the gaping maw of a stone fireplace, a table and a couple of armchairs. He gave me a push towards a long, slightly-sagging denim blue sofa with deep cushions. "Sit."

I sat, but not without protest. "I thought you said you couldn't give orders anymore?" I reminded him snidely, turning around to watch him. The gun slung behind him now, he moved into a room on the other side of the entryway. The kitchen, from the looks of the cream-colored decade-old refrigerator, which I could see from where I sat. There was no verbal answer, only the sound of a drawer opening and closing, and the faint scuffle of mountaineer boots on linoleum and thin fawn-colored carpet.

When he returned, the gun was gone, and in Jack's hands was a strange object: somewhat oval in shape, but flattened and with tapered ends. Whatever material it was made out of gave off an opalescent sheen in the light that trickled through the square-paned windows. On one side there seemed to be a kind of touchpad-slash-screen; standing in front of the couch, Jack held the thing in one hand and used the touchpad with the other, all with remarkable ease for a man who avoided technology whenever he could.

"That's Asgaard too, isn't it?" I asked after a moment of silence, as all of Jack's attention was focused on the object. "I remember when we were working with the--" An unexpected and decidedly unnatural breeze suddenly caressed my face, ruffled my hair. I almost jumped off the couch but settled for gripping the armrest instead. "What the hell was that?"

Still nothing. Jack stared into the screen of the Asgaard-looking machine as though seeking an important answer from an alien Magic 8 Ball. Slowly, curious and a little worried, I rose to my feet, leaning over to see the display... which was all in Asgaard characters. Scrolling characters that Jack was reading.

And then he gave a sigh. Neither resigned nor relieved... just a sigh... and then he tossed the machine onto the couch.

"So," he said wearily, looking at me without suspicion for the first time. "You're not a Gou'ald."

"Well, I could have told you that." I paused as his words caught up with me. "Wait a minute! Gou'ald? Why would you think that I was a Gou'ald?"

Jack fidgeted before me, emotion returning to his face a twitch and wrinkle at a time. "I think you're right, Carter, I think we need to, um, talk." But instead of sitting, he maneuvered around me, heading back to the kitchen, walking quickly, talking faster. Nervously even. "But how about dinner first, huh? I think I've got something in here... you're probably hungry... I know I've got beer, maybe some crackers... no, wait, you don't want the crackers, they've been up here since... I don't even want to think about that, actually..."

Frowning at the abrupt change in mood, wondering again about his mental state, I followed him into the kitchen. It looked like something that the 80s had regurgitated: gray, curling linoleum, dark wood cabinets... an orange countertop for crying out loud. Jack had his head stuck halfway into the mostly-empty fridge - how did he live like this? - and was muttering unintelligibly to himself. I hesitated for a moment, finally taking a breath and reaching out to touch his shoulder. He reacted as though electrically shocked, spinning around to face me with stray threads of anxiety and desperation in his eyes. He reached out to brush me off, but the instant his hand touched mine it twitched and stilled.

Although it must have only lasted a few seconds, that moment seemed to go on for eons. Time in which I realized how much I had missed him, how much I had loved him, and how much I still cared for him despite all that had happened. Looking into his eyes was like looking into a mirror, one that reflected back at me all my faults and follies, mistakes and misdeeds, because he had made the same errors.

I should have never let him go, I realized. I should have never have let him leave my lab that day, should never have let him go back to Ilonka, to a woman who was with him only because she considered him 'fun'. I should have waited until the minute that he was officially out of the Air Force and not a second longer, and I should have gone to him and told him everything. Maybe it would have worked out and maybe it wouldn't have, but suddenly face to face with the source of conflict, it was hard to tell myself that the not knowing had been the better outcome. If I had, four years ago, told him about my feelings like I never could have in front of Anise and her damned machine, maybe my heart would have been broken... but the choice would have been taken from my hands. It would have been up to him once and for all - me or Ilonka, Ilonka or me - and it would have been his choice.

I found myself thinking back on the last day I had seen him, about a month before leaving Colorado. The meeting had been totally by chance; I certainly couldn't have brought myself to intentionally see him. It had been a chance thing, a fluke. We'd run into each other in the breakfast food aisle of the local grocery store.

I'd seen him before he'd spotted me, and I'd almost backed myself and my cart out of the aisle before he looked up from a box of Froot Loops. But something stopped me, froze me to the ground. At that time, I'd thought it had been my own stupid sentimentality, but I had come to know better.

As though sensing my presence, he'd immediately looked up in my direction. "Sam." He sounded surprised.

"I didn't know you shopped here," was all I'd been able to say.

Jack had tossed the cereal into his cart and moved a couple steps in my direction. "Thought I could use a change." A beat. "I heard you left the SGC."

There was an underscore of disappointment in his voice, and it made me squirm. "Thought I could use a change," I'd commented, trying to smile but failing. I'd only that morning received the phone call from the mysterious General Dirae, telling me where I'd been relocated and why.

Jack hadn't pressed the matter, but neither had he come any closer. "Aren't you going to miss it?"

My laughter had been unexpectedly bitter. "Miss what? Getting shot at all the time? Watching people die? Being in constant danger? Never knowing who's going to try and kill you next?"

Jack had shrugged. "I once knew someone who referred to that as 'discovery' and 'adventure'."

I'd winced, feeling hopelessly Pollyannaish. "I don't know her."

I had meant to leave then, to turn about and go, to abandon my shopping and leave the store if necessary, but Jack's voice had stopped me just as I'd turned my back. "I'm sorry about Dawson."

Closing my eyes briefly, I'd turned back to him. "Me too," I said softly. "You know, I was thinking... the really ironic thing... if that had been the old SG-1, if that had been you commanding instead of me..."

"I would probably have ordered you to check out that cave," Jack had finished.

"And I'd have died instead of Dawson," I'd agreed.

"So who's to blame then?" Jack'd asked. "Me or you?"

I hadn't answered. There had been no answer. I'd left my cart sitting there and I'd walked and quickly as I could out the door. I'd thrown myself into my car and pulled out of the parking lot as quickly as possible, checking all the time for signs that he was following me. He hadn't.

I blinked, and the action brought me out of the memory and back into the present: Jack's kitchen, his hand lying atop mine. Before I could draw another breath, the moment passed; he jerked his hand away and I did the same, stuffing it awkwardly into my pocket. We were at a crossroads, I realized, although this bare, dreary kitchen seemed to be an unbefitting place for one. Whatever happened in the next few seconds could quite possibly determine how we regarded each other for the rest of our lives.

I wanted to tell him everything: that I had been jealous of Ilonka but too proud to say so, that I had finally realized the depth of my feelings but had told myself that it had been too late to change anything. That I had been a coward. I wanted to tell him all this and absolve myself from my guilt and regret, or at least take the first small step towards eventual healing. But maybe it wasn't meant to be.

There was the sudden sound of footsteps pounding on the porch, and the front door was flung open. Jack and I both spun and stared towards the entryway as Paul Davis ran - yes, ran - into the house.

"Jack--" he began, stopping short when he saw me. "Umm... I guess I'm a little late..."

Chapter 15

Jack set three cold bottles of beer on the coffee table and sat down heavily in one of the recliners. We were back in the living room, my insistence driving the two reluctant men. I needed answers and I needed them now, I didn't care how uncomfortable they might be with my presence.

Sitting back on the low couch, I turned to Paul, who sat beside me. It would be easier to start with him, I thought. After all, we'd just spoken, even if much of what he had told me had been untrue, and as a bonus we didn't have the strange... history that Jack and I did.

I resisted the urge to glance over at my old CO. Driving out here, forced to think about him, I'd actually considered the possibility that the history, the strange spark that existed between us might actually have been extinguished. After all, there had been little or nothing to keep it alive after all these years. But the odd experience in the kitchen had said otherwise; what I had felt when he'd touched my hand had been so strange, yet so familiar...

Clearing my throat, I focused on Paul. "So, where do we start? The fact that you lied to me? The fact that you obviously felt you didn't trust me? How about the fact that you're missing a set of wheels?"

Leaning back against the opposite armrest, trying to exhibit a casualness I knew was forced, Paul frowned. "I didn't lie. But I wasn't sure if you could be trusted, either. I figured that if you got the hint, it would at least delay you a little... long enough for me to beat you up here. And that if you didn't... it would indicate that you weren't meant to be here after all."

I felt rebuked, as though I'd just been refused membership into a popular club. Exclusionary bastards. "Why wouldn't you think that I could be trusted?"

Paul shot a guilty look towards Jack. I cringed. No, not Jack... I didn't want to have to face him quite yet. Thankfully, Jack remained silent and Paul decided to field the question by himself. "We felt that you left the SGC under some suspicious circumstances," he muttered, not looking at me.

"Suspicious?" I bristled. "I left the SGC because I couldn't do the job. On what should have been a routine mission, I lost a member of my team. I didn't even make it a month without a fatality. A stupid, meaningless fatality. If I'd been doing my job, I would have noticed the traces of seismic activity before even setting foot on that planet, and even if we'd still gone I never would have sent Dawson into that cave." I shuddered slightly, remember the sense of panic that had overwhelmed me as I stood out on the open plain with Daniel and Teal'c, feeling the ground quake beneath my feet and hearing Dawson's screams as he was crushed to death in a collapsing cave not two hundred yards away.

I'd asked Hammond to be relieved of my command, to go back to what I did right most of the time: science. Hard science, theoretical science... as long as it was the kind of science where I didn't have to go out into the field and listen to the dying screams of good men. Reluctantly, he had agreed -- telling me that it was only temporary, however, time to get my confidence up.

But then the depression had hit, hard and fast, and not even the Stargate Program had been left unscathed. The gate itself was kept open, and teams kept going through it, but the science departments were drastically slashed. Entire floors were shut down to save power. Lab work and proceedings we had once carried out ourselves were contracted out to already-existing companies and government institutions, and I found myself without a job. Hammond offered to reinstate me on a team, even if it wasn't in a leadership capacity, but I hadn't been mentally or emotionally able to take him up on it. I'd left, packing up my belongings with the help of Daniel and Teal'c, Siler and Janet, vowing to live off savings until I was reassigned.

Again, Paul shot Jack a desperate glance. Jack sighed, reaching forward to grab a bottle off the table. Grudgingly, I turned to face him, fixing him with my most determined glare. "From the beginning. Please."

Using the underside of the table as a bottle opener, and then leaning back and sipping his drink, he didn't immediately answer. Finally, Paul had to prompt him. "Come on, Jack," he soughed. "I've overheard you reciting this little speech to yourself for the last two weeks. Don't tell me you don't know what to say."

Jack's answering glare was unreadable. A little irritation, maybe, and a little acceptance. "Two weeks?" I prodded. "That's how long you've been here?"

He nodded, closing his eyes as though to better remember. "I think it was about... sixteen days ago, actually. I was sitting in my living room, watching TV, minding my own business, when all of a sudden..." He opened his eyes and looked at me questioningly, and I realized that he was expecting me to guess what had happened next.

I remembered the laser emitter, and the strange oval-shaped device. "The Asgaard."

"Thor," said Jack, which I thought was an odd correction to make. Thor was AN Asgaard, wasn't he? "But yeah, one minute I'm watching a high, sac-fly out to right field... the next I'm staring down at a pair of big black eyes."

"What did Thor say?"

"He said 'hi'. He's usually pretty polite, you know, even when he's kidnapping humans."

I rolled my eyes, secretly thrilled to hear the lace-edge of sarcasm in his voice. "Why did he bring you up to his ship?" I clarified.

"Because... the Gou'ald are back."

I narrowed my eyes, confused. For the last year before I'd left, the Gou'ald hadn't been so much of a concern as in the beginning. With Apophis dead, the power struggle between the remaining 'Gods' had not so much settled down as it had moved away from Earth. And since the Asgaard had defeated the Replicators in their own galaxy, they'd had a bigger presence in ours; incentive for the Gou'ald to honor the Protected Planets Treaty. "How can the Gou'ald be back? I mean, there haven't exactly been reports of motherships swooping down out of the sky and landing on the Luxor, or did I miss something."

Paul was shaking his head. "That was more Apophis's style. The Gou'ald running the show now is a lot more sneaky. She doesn't have the necessary ships or foot soldiers to do the whole full-scale assault thing. She's been sending smaller, cloaked ships instead, like shuttles, back and forth from her ship to various isolated spots on Earth. Transporting Gou'ald symbiotes."

"Thousands of the suckers," Jack continued glumly, not even giving me a second to absorb this. "Thor thinks she's been going through the galaxy, stealing larvae out of other Gou'ald's temples, killing Jaffa and harvesting their... Juniors. And then she brings them here, to Earth: isolated, out of the way places... one-horse towns. Looks like her MO is to attack small groups of people, like customers at a restaurant or people in church. Her plainclothes Jaffa go in, grab them, and infest them before anyone can get out a warning."

"Thor's counted five thousand people so far who've been taken as hosts," agreed Paul. "Walking around among us without our knowledge. Unfortunately we don't have positive IDs on all of them. But there has been a trend, for the most part. These new hosts who've maybe never had a thought their entire lives beyond the county line suddenly start attending top-rate schools and getting appointed to high-ranking occupations. Most of them with the government."

I'd brought up one hand to press against my forehead, trying to comprehend all this as it was thrown at me; I raised my palm towards Paul, signaling him to stop. "Wait... waitaminute... you're telling me that Gou'ald have infiltrated the government?" He nodded, and I blinked. "The military... the Air Force?"

"It's possible," he said quietly. "We estimate that it was only about two months after the Gou'ald first arrived that funding for the SGC was chopped down."

I shook my head. "No... no, there was a perfectly good reason for that. The economy was slumping, Congress was screaming for money to throw at it, and we don't exactly have a pro-military President, if you remember."

Jack and Paul were both silent, staring at me rather pedantically. I got the uneasy feeling that they both saw me as hopelessly naïve, almost provincial, and certainly out of practice with this automatic acceptance of the unbelievable. Remember, Sam, I told myself. Alien is nothing new. Aliens on Earth is nothing new. Lying politicians... that's positively old. Sighing softly, I asked, "You really want me to believe that not only are certain people in the government Gou'ald hosts... but also that there are possibly others in the government who are sympathetic to them? I can't imagine that anyone could possibly learn the truth about the Gou'ald and not either run screaming for the hills, the press, or a mental institution."

"We didn't," said Jack, acidly.

"We didn't have much choice but to believe it," I retorted. "Fine, for the time being... I'll accept what you're telling me. Then why aren't the Asgaard doing anything to stop this? I assume the Protected Planets Treaty doesn't only cover overtly hostile invasion."

"We're not dealing with the Asgaard Council," said Jack. "Just Thor. He's the only one on his ship. He came here to warn us."

"To warn you," I pointed out.

"He scanned me to make sure I wasn't a host before he told me anything. Easier to check one person instead of an entire base."

I swallowed. So they were assuming that the SGC was infiltrated as well? "I know... he likes you."

I was certain that he smothered a smile. "He brought me up and he told me about the infiltration. The Gou'ald in charge of this little operation... she's getting more specific now. Going after certain people she thought would best help her stage a mostly-bloodless coup. There was a list. I was on it."

Shifting on the couch, leaning forward eagerly, I nodded. "You staged your house to make it look like you had either left or been kidnapped, and then Thor brought you out here."

"After he hacked into property records and erased any evidence that it belongs to me."

A question still buzzed in my mind like an obsessive mosquito - why hadn't he told Ilonka about his fabled fishing cabin? Why hadn't she known? - but something told me that that particular question might be best left to another time. A time when Paul Davis wasn't sitting here with us.

That reminded me. Paul. "Was this all a trick too?" I asked, nodding down at his fully-functional legs. "A reason for you to leave the SGC?"

He looked pained. "No. Unfortunately, that part was much too real. Not that I haven't started wondering if my accident was such an accident after all," he added bitterly. "But, no, my retirement and Colonel Waters' replacing me was genuine. No subterfuge."

I had my own thoughts about that, but they also would have to wait. "Then how did you get mixed up in this?"

Oddly enough, Jack answered; I turned back to him. "After Thor explained the situation to me and transplanted me up here... it was my own request."

Something tightened inside me, turning and twisting and causing something to pull inside my chest. "You needed a sidekick."

"I needed help," he said evenly. "From someone who wasn't under the military's thumb, or constant surveillance."

"He thought of me for the same reason you did," Paul added, seemingly reluctant to come to Jack's defense. "Because nobody considers a retired cripple to be a threat, or a worthwhile host. Not where there are millions and millions of perfectly healthy humans out there. Thor healed me," he added after a moment of thought. "He and Jack gave me my legs... my life back. I owe them a lot. And I'm here because I want to be."

"You weren't here when I called you," I pointed out, sobered by the vehemence in his voice. I'd been around to see how bitter Paul had been about the accident and his treatment by the Air Force after the fact; he'd been convinced that one would give him the time of day because of what had happened. Although we'd never been close before, I'd made a special effort to spend some time with him, and had been surprised to find that once Paul'd decided that I wasn't making pity calls, we could have a pretty good time together.

"They have passive surveillance on me," he said with a small shrug, as though it was nothing much. "No phone taps or beacons, just good old peeping Toms. Human, actually. Humans who don't know who they're working for."

My scalp prickled. Those humans, like the fibbie's at the charge station, were probably working for a boss with a snake in his or her head. They were told to do something and did not question. Hell, they might have been told that I was a dangerous fugitive, a murderer or a threat to national security. They didn't need to be told the truth. They just needed to get me.

"Before today," Paul continued, "I'd only been up here a few times, for a few hours. Most of the time I stay at my place and communicate with Jack and the others through Thor. Try to keep up appearances, which has been hard... being stuck in that damn chair when I'm perfectly healthy." He sighed, probably reminding himself to be thankful. "But someone must have seen us at the supermarket, or else I was never as neglected as we thought. Not even an hour after I got home, two suits showed up at my house. Asking about you."

Jack shifted in his seat, looking concerned. I spared him only a brief glance.

"I basically denied it all and they left, but I knew that even if they believed me, they'd tap the phone." He looked at Jack. "Otherwise I would have called. I thought it would take her until at least Missouri before she figured it out... if she did at all... that I would have time to get up here and warn you. I ended up being followed, all the way through Indiana... I know I lost them but it meant I didn't have a chance to call."

I stared down at my hands, hating how he talked as though I wasn't even in the room, hating how half the time Jack wouldn't even look at me, and how the other times he watched me so intensely it was as though he didn't trust Thor's Gou'ald detector.

But it wasn't just that.

Dragging my eyes up to meet his - boldly, holding fast - I asked, "I wasn't on the list, was I?"

Chapter 16

"That's what you meant by suspicious circumstances," I continued, slowly shaking my head in disbelief. My voice seemed dreamy, disconnected from me. Hell, it didn't even sound like me anymore; like a tape recording being played back. "If I had been on the list as the next to get Gou'alded, I would have been trustworthy. You would have called me. But I wasn't, and you didn't call... because the only people as high up and as deeply entrenched in military operations as I am are already hosts... or are sympathizers."

Jack said nothing, and the simple lack of response told me that I was right. Damn it, but I hadn't wanted to be right - not now, not about this. And the continued wariness in his eyes told me something else, something just as awful. "You still don't trust me." There was a way for him to check to see if I was a host, of course, but no real scientific method of deducing whether or not I had turned my allegiance over to this Gou'ald. "This is me," I blurted uncouthly. "I spent years of my life... I almost died... I did die once or twice fighting the Gou'ald. And now you're accusing me of... what? Working for one?" He said nothing, and my enraged flashed as a host's eyes might. "Paul, can we please have some privacy."

I imagined that he had never been as thankful for functioning legs as he was at that moment.

Only when the sound of the screen door slamming had reverberated through the house did I speak again. "This is ME, Jack."

He winced. "When we died," he said harshly, speaking around a pain lodged in his throat, "When we fought, it was against Apophis. This is Osiris."

Osiris... Sarah... Daniel's friend. I felt my mind stutter at the realization, but only briefly. "She's... he's... it's still a Gou'ald, for Christ's sake. Jack, I thought you knew me better then that."

I had become so accustomed to his continuing unresponsiveness, illuminated by quick sparks of anger, that I was unprepared for what he did next. Careful not to touch my bare skin, he reached out to me, grabbing my leg just above the knee, and I let him. He held it tightly, and after only a few seconds the muscle began to cramp, but I let him. To show I trusted him, and because I knew that nothing good would come of me pushing him away. "I do know you," he said vehemently. "I did. And the Sam Carter I knew would never get scared away from her command because of a freak field accident, or leave the whole program to be a literal postergirl for the military... and she would never call me 'Jack'."

He released my leg but didn't move; neither of us did. I couldn't, and it wasn't just because of the cramp. What he had said had cut too deeply to allow me to safely move; one wrong step and it felt as though my guts might spill out across the floor. He actually thought that my leaving first SG-1 and then the SGC was so out of character that it meant I was no longer on Earth's side. I wasn't sure if I ought to be offended or agree with his assessment. Maybe it was... I had surprised myself by my actions, as well as everyone else. But it had been hard; it had been an unwelcome wake-up call, a sign that I wasn't cut out for command after all. I couldn't defend my actions any better now then I had been able to back then, but I could work up some righteous anger at his misunderstanding. "If you don't want me calling you 'Jack', I won't," I said coldly. "But as I'm not under your command any longer, that does raise the question of what I will call you. Personally I think 'jackass' is pretty fitting, but I don't know, it has 'Jack' in it, so it still might make you comfortable, and we can't have that..."

For a split second, it seemed as though he might burst out laughing, but as I looked closer the moment passed. He wanted to believe me, I saw, but there was something there, preventing him from truly trusting again. Something more profound than a suspicious nature.

Abruptly, he stood, stretching out a kink in his back and shouting, "Yo, Davis! We're going upstairs... you and Duke hold down the fort."

The front door creaked slightly as Paul stepped back inside, peeking gingerly around the corner, into the room, seemingly relieved that we hadn't maimed each other. "Are you sure that's a good idea..." He cleared his throat and looked at me, still sitting on the couch. "Um, no offense, Sam, it's just that we..."

I stood as well, brushing up against Jack as we attempted to maneuver through the cramped space between the furniture. "No, no offense," I muttered. "No more than usual."

Paul vanished again.

For the first time, I noticed the small black box clipped to his jeans, right at the hip. As though Jack noticed me watching, he pulled it off the hem and proceeded to fiddle with its black plastic controls. "What's that?" I asked, against my better judgement. Rationally speaking, it would be best for me to just stay quiet and not ask too many questions, because what else would a spy do but try to find out as many of his secrets in the shortest period of time? But if he was judging my actions compared to when we worked together, he would be anticipating my insatiable interest in all things technological, and... well, basically, I couldn't keep second-guessing myself like this. It would eventually drive me insane.

"What's it took like?" Jack mumbled, focused on the box. Presently he walked further into the middle of the room, a small space clear of furniture and knick knacks, and gestured for me to follow.

"It looks like a pager," I responded. "I want to know what it really is. Another present from Thor?"

I was pleased to see a smile, hard smile fleetingly quirk the corners of his mouth. "It's an alarm... lets me know when someone's coming up the road."

Nodding, I remembered the laser emitter. "Why didn't it go off for Paul?"

"He's got a tracer on him. So do I."

I smiled. "Subcutaneous, right?" I asked, remembering his earlier use of the word.

"The laser reads the tracer and cancels out the alarm, lets us come and go without... well, setting off a false alarm. Sort of a technological doorman," he answered, not noticing my amusement, pressing a final button before looking satisfied. "It also makes a good elevator."

A bright light obscured my field of vision, but it came and went so quickly that I wondered if it wasn't just my exhaustion catching up with me. "Elevator?" I asked, perplexed, noticing only after I'd spoken that we were indeed 'upstairs'. Turning around, I saw not Jack's shabbily comfortable living room, but the planet Earth in all its jeweled glory, suspended in a garden of stars. Disorientation and nausea rippled through me, and I must have swayed because Jack again made physical contact, gripping my forearm firmly. "You okay?"

Closing my eyes for a moment, willing the vertigo to pass, I nodded. "Yeah... it's just... big. Sudden."

A few seconds later, when I felt reasonably well recovered, I let Jack lead me away from the platform and further into the Asgaard ship we'd been transported aboard. The lighting was low, though not so dim as it had been on the Biliskner, after the Replicators had taken control and brought it to Earth. It was just as silent, however, just as empty-feeling. Walking side by side, my footsteps and Jack's echoed slightly down the long passage. Not only did we seem to be the only two people on the ship, but the only two beings left in the cosmos. A sort of galactic Adam and Eve. Considering the ramifications of that scenario, I quietly blushed.

The feeling that we had been brought aboard a ghost ship abated, however, as soon as we turned a corner towards what I can come to think of the Asgaard briefing room. It was the same general floor plan as the Biliskner. With a small tap on the controls, the doors opened obligingly, and suddenly the spacecraft was filled with light and sound and motion.

"...because I figure if we create a profile of some kind, you know, everything we know about her, we can drastically cut down on the number of potential hosts."

"You are assuming that Osiris would display some kind of pattern in choosing hosts, DanielJackson."

"Well don't they usually?" asked Daniel. He paced the length of the room, oblivious - as was Teal'c - to our presence. Thor, sitting at the far side of the long table, noticed us at once, but said nothing. He merely blinked, and the expression had the weight of the most impassioned human exclamation. "They want healthy, after all. Spirited. Fit, capable, agile. Physical beauty counts for a lot too. Seems like the Gou'ald can be as superficial as humans when it comes to looks."

"You don't think beauty is in the eyes of the snakehead?" inquired Jack.

All eyes turned towards us. The motion and sound ceased as surely as though someone had flipped a switch and turned them off. Daniel, pacing relentlessly around the room, occasionally scratching his head or shaping pictures in the air with his hands, froze with his mouth hanging open. Teal'c, sitting across the table from Thor, hands calmly folded on the table, turned around to stare at us. Thor blinked again. I felt like an animal put on display.

And then everything snapped back out of freeze frame. Daniel's hands fell to his side, his eyes actually bugging out so dramatically that he might have passed for one of Thor's relatives. Teal'c leapt out of his chair, producing a Zat gun from the holster at his side and pointing it directly at me. Instead of fear, I felt exasperation, and looked up at Jack with a sigh. "At least it's not just you."

"Wait, wait!" Daniel fairly leapt between Teal'c and myself, as though prepared to 'take a bullet' for me. He blinked rapidly, and his eyes returned to their normal size behind his glasses. "Sam? Is that you?"

"No," I said sarcastically. "I'm her evil twin."

Epilogue

After I had been hugged, apologized to, and greeted by my friends, Thor graciously mentioned that after driving day and night for such a long distance, I might appreciate a chance to rest. I hadn't even bothered to ask if he'd been tracking me - it seemed obvious - but the way that Jack stared at the little Asgaard told me he'd been left in the dark as much as anyone.

Apparently, Jack and the others had on occasion spent the night up here too; in an adjacent room was an air mattress, already inflated, and a small herd of camping accoutrements. Daniel helped me get settled in, unrolling a sleeping bag onto the mattress and telling me not too drool on the pillow. His words were lighthearted, and he smiled at me as Jack had yet to, but there was a disturbing lack of normal emotion in his voice. Something missing in the smile. He didn't trust me any more than the others.

Friends, I thought bitterly, lying down atop the sleeping bag, still fully dressed. I still thought of them as friends, didn't I? And I probably always would, wouldn't I? To be fair, Daniel didn't seem to consider me the enemy... and Teal'c had always been a little trigger happy, so maybe he didn't either. Jack was unconvinced one way or the other. They didn't hate me, but they didn't trust me. I looked around the storage room that had been converted into an impromptu bedroom, spending almost half an hour searching for what could be a hidden camera before giving up.

My absence these past four years had created an chasm between us all, and the circumstances of my leaving had deepened and darkened it into a certifiable abyss. It was no longer about my deciding that command wasn't for me, deciding that staying in Colorado was too uncomfortable. It had moved past my petty jealousies and regrets with regard to Jack. If Osiris was on Earth, importing symbiotes in an effort to invade Earth by means of subterfuge and sneak attack - instead of brute force and intimidation - and if the government was as compromised as the others seemed to think, this went far beyond any one person. Or any two people for that matter.

For the next few hours I drifted in and out of an exhausted sleep, waking periodically to uncharacteristically strong feelings of despair and regret.

If Jack had thought I might be a Gou'ald, why hadn't he tried to get in touch with me anyway, to help me, to free me from the living hell of existing as a host?

Was he right in some perverse way? Had I been a sympathizer simply by working with Ilonka to find him? Guilt by association?

Why did it have to end like this?

The End