- One -
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
- Carl Sagan
"Dobraye Ootra, Colonel.
Zgravst vooeetiay?"
For
almost ten full seconds Jack O'Neill maintained his composure, staring straight
ahead with a slightly glazed expression, the same expression he'd worn since
the elevator doors had opened. He'd
genuinely hoped that if he pretended they didn't exist, they would return
the favor. But no
such courtesy, so such luck. And
now he had to look at them and somehow acknowledge their presence.
Captain Yuri Kozlov was still glancing over his shoulder, his mouth stretched in an ungainly smile that didn't reach his eyes, a smile that faded as the seconds passed, the doors closed, and Jack merely glanced in his direction. Kozlov glanced at Alexei Voronin, a younger man who hardly looked old enough to bear the rank of Lieutenant. Voronin shrugged and turned his attention to the descending number display on the elevator wall, either understanding Jack's strategy or just choosing not to test the man. Smart kid, Jack thought, slipping back into the blank forward stare.
It
wasn't that he had some kind of mindless prejudice against the Russians. He had squared that away with
And
if you didn't trust them, you had damn well have
a better reason than what borders they were born behind.
For
instance, he hadn't trusted Zukhov because he'd
sensed that the man was hiding something.
So there you had it. Perfectly legit. Nothing personal.
It
wasn't personal with Kozlov or Voronin,
either, and it certainly wasn't prejudice.
They just... bugged him. A lot. In a million
different ways, namely the way they spoke Russian in public whenever possible,
despite reportedly being fluent in English.
And the fact that they wore their own uniforms – ugly black and green
camo - but had co-opted the distinctive arm patches designed
by the Air Force for SGC team use.
And the way they complained constantly about the food in the commissary,
and waxed lyrical about Mother Russia at every given opportunity - that,
ironically enough, was done in English - and, well, their mere presence.
There
were some things that Jack O'Neill had no opinion on, but the SGC - which
roughly comprised his life these days - was emphatically not one of them.
Participation in the Stargate Program was not up for the highest bidder. It
was not a UN venture -- thank God.
It was not a matter of finders keepers, either. So
Even
after taking into account all the things that the SGC wasn't, it still remained
that it was a bargaining chip...
again, according to the policy makers in
Kovloz was speaking quietly to Voronin now. In Russian. Which meant the Captain could be remarking on
anything from the beauty of the
It
was the longest elevator ride in SGC history.
The
car stopped on 24 and the doors parted to admit a single individual: Major
Sam Carter, no doubt also on her way to the briefing. Kozlov and Voronin stepped aside to let her through, smiling all the
way and uttering some more incomprehensible babblespeak. As she slid between them towards the rear of
the elevator she gave a slightly puzzled but nevertheless gracious smile and
nod of her head.
"Hello,"
she said politely, glancing first at the Lieutenant and then the Captain.
"Privyet," replied Kozlov and tipping his head. Infuriating.
Jack
glared at Carter as the doors closed once again, and she frowned back with
genuine confusion. Because he had no
special second language to use in times like this, he improvised. "Ex-nay on the ello-hay,"
he told her witheringly, assuming that Carter was enough of a geek to recognize
Pig Latin when she heard it. Apparently
she understood the message because her expression shifted from puzzlement
to exasperation and she tried to cover up a bout of eye-rolling with a studious
look at the elevator ceiling.
Kozlov and Voronin got off at 25, the former with
a slightly perplexed look over his shoulder, but that was the limit of their
interaction. Carter held her tongue
until the doors had closed and not a second longer, largely unsuccessful in
trying to mask her exasperation. "Would
you rather I have been rude to them, sir?"
Jack
shook his head, knowing from her tone exactly what she thought of his reprimand.
"Not rude," he explained. "Just... not friendly."
She
stared at the ceiling again. He'd never
specifically brought up the topic of the Russian team with her, but then again
opportunities for chit-chat of any variety had been scarce lately.
"Look,
sir," Carter began as the elevator stopped on 27 and they disembarked.
"I don't really like this anymore than you do."
She lowered her voice slightly as they passed a few open doors and
a couple attentive airmen. "I'm
not happy with them being here. But I just don't know what good it does to treat
them... well, worse than we treat new recruits." She spread her hands and added - tentatively
- "I mean, I can't see them going to
Jack
didn't answer. He knew what Carter probably thought: that he had a lot of
pent-up anger for the Goa'uld and Tok'ra - and whatever else they were calling
themselves these days - as a result of his 'ordeal'. That was what they were calling it, unofficially.
An 'ordeal', because 'incident' was too subdued and
'nightmare' too emotional. Anyway, he had all of this rage about his 'ordeal'
and he was misplacing it on the nearest target of convenience, the Russians.
Neat, tidy... throw a cigar in there and it would also be very Freudian.
Jack's experience in his own mind, however, had convinced him that
it was neither neat, tidy or prone to textbook-Freudian
procedure. He wasn't about to go all
repentant on a theory, either, so he gracelessly changed the subject. "So... what can you tell me about old P..."
Carter
didn't even pause; he had to give her that.
"P3F-787."
"Ah. Sounds magical. Desert planet, swamp planet, ice planet...?"
From
the corner of his eye he saw her lips twitch in a repressed smirk. "Try none of the above. The MALP showed blue skies, rolling hills, a
valley with a little village..."
"Ah. So it's going to be one of those missions."
Confused,
she glanced over at him. "What
do you mean?"
He
stopped, knowing that the explanation would last longer than
it would take them to reach the briefing room and not wanting to be overheard
by the General, and turned towards Carter.
"It's just... I swear Hammond's got a folder in his desk labeled
'Nice Little Harmless Planets', and every time a team has something... dramatic
happen, and he's not quite sure they're up to par, he reaches in and pulls
out... well, blue skies, rolling hills. Something
not stressful and... well, boring.
Not that I don't appreciate the consideration, mind you, but I could
do with a little variety now and then."
Not to mention a little more confidence in his teams.
Jack
moved his hands around, infused his voice with plenty of mock irritation,
but Carter wasn't deterred. She narrowed
her eyes thoughtfully, solemnly. "Is
that what you call it?" she asked, her tone
uncharacteristically brittle. "'Something dramatic'?"
Well,
at least it was better than 'ordeal', Jack thought, shrugging automatically.
The truth was that he didn't think about it much at all, hence the
jokes and nicknames and off-the-cuff remarks that were supposed to minimize
what had happened so that everyone else would relax.
When that happened, maybe he could relax,
maybe he could start to think about... what had happened. But not now, not yet. Thinking about it now would probably drive him
as crazy as everybody already thought he was.
Taking
his shrug as an answer, Carter sighed and shook her head. "And General Hammond doesn't think you
aren't 'up to par', sir. None of us
do. Doctor Frasier said you're fit
for duty, so... you're fit for duty."
Jack
liked to think that she could be so accepting, so trusting, but he was pretty
sure that he had enough self-doubt for the both of them. Staring momentarily at the tips of his shoes,
he gave a brisk "Yeah, sure," and then looked back up. "Come on, I want to hear about this Nice
Little Harmless Planet."
- - -
"The
entire village is at the bottom of a small valley. The Stargate's
up on a hill enclosing that valley, and there's what appears to be a stone
stairway down the side of the hill to the bottom. Just about twenty feet. Since the MALP wouldn't be able to navigate
the stairs, we sent a UAV, and..."
Jonas,
who'd been flipping through the report since the moment he'd received it,
was ready and waiting for Sam's expectant pause.
Frowning, he looked up from the sheaf of papers. "Nothing?"
"Well,
not exactly nothing," Sam corrected him.
"There is the village I mentioned... about fifty large structures,
buildings that look like they could be homes, barns, stores, even a town hall.
There's a main road, two large wells, gardens, fences... but no people."
"Maybe
they were on a picnic," offered Colonel O'Neill obtusely.
Everyone
- Sam, Jonas, Teal'c and General Hammond - looked briefly at the Colonel,
and then away. It was an appropriate
comment - appropriate to be coming from him, anyway - but Sam couldn't help
think that it sounded forced and somewhat flat.
His heart wasn't in it today, she realized, wondering if that had something
to do with his perception that they'd been stuck with this mission because
the General didn't trust him with a more risky operation. She had to admit that P3F-787 wouldn't have
been her first choice, either; she would have gone for something with more
mystery, more action, more... something. But
then again, she wasn't the commander of this base, and there was a very good
reason for that. She resigned herself
to trusting General Hammond's judgment.
"Is
it not possible," wondered Teal'c, "that the inhabitants of the
village were hiding inside their homes, where the UAV would not be able to
detect them?"
Sam
shook her head. "I'm sure the
thermal sensors would have detected that."
There
was something else, something that she wasn't going to bring up because it
was completely unscientific, completely unproven, and therefore not only inapplicable
but also unlike her. She'd seen the
video from the UAV, studied it before putting together the report and coming
to the briefing, and something about the footage had unnerved her. Nothing specific, nothing
that she could point out as an anomaly, just a vague... feeling. And that was odd, because generally she was
so caught up in facts that feelings were kept on the back burner. Usually. In this case, however, intuition had raised
its ugly head from the moment she'd realized what she was looking at: a ghost
town. Even though the video was fuzzy
and imprecise, the village seemed to have an abandoned aura about it, a look
of complete desolation. Sure, they
had come across abandoned cities before, the entire gamut of ancient and not-so-ancient
ruins... but none of them had ever given her a chill quite as arctic as this
one. And she hadn't even set foot on
the planet yet.
The
sound of shuffling papers brought Sam's attention back to General Hammond. "We'll stay in radio contact as long as
possible," he decided, referring to the 38 minutes that the Stargate
would remain open from Earth's end. "Be
sure to check for signs of traffic between the village and the Stargate. We can't rule out the possibility of an ambush."
"Yes,
sir," said Colonel O'Neill, sitting forward in his chair somewhat jerkily.
"I'm sure it'll go very, very smoothly."
He glanced at Sam, and the back at
She
tried not to wince at the strained quality of his voice, wondering if the
forced confidence was genuine or if he was treading the line again, daring
But
either General Hammond didn't hear the phony, almost mocking note of conviction
or - more likely - he was choosing to ignore it. "Glad to hear it," he said curtly,
standing and waiting for the rest of them to follow suit. "SG-1, your mission is on for tomorrow,
0900 hours."
Sam
nodded and, standing with the others, waited for
This
was to be SG-1's first official mission since Colonel O'Neill had been cleared
for duty. The apparent ease and speed
with which that had happened had surprised everybody; Sam had still been trying
to come to terms with the idea of O'Neill re-retiring when Janet had announced
that the Colonel was ready and eager to resume command. Sam had been pleased, possibly more so than
anybody save
That
aside, it was still natural for them all to be a little tense, Sam reasoned.
They were still adjusting to Jonas.
They'd gotten a lot thrown at them in just the past few months, and
now this. Maybe if General Hammond
was sending them on some kind of 'freebie', an easy recon mission with no
foreseeable dangers, if Colonel O'Neill was right about that after all...
maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. They needed to spend time together again, needed
to feel comfortable in each others' presence again, and what better way to
do that than a typical mission? No
need for heroics, no need for risks, no need to worry about how the Colonel
might react to... either of those. And
it would give her time to get her head on straight, something she desperately
needed to do for the next time risks and heroics were called for.
"Major
Carter?"
For
the second time in the past ten minutes - an embarrassing statistic - General
Hammond's voice brought her back into the present. She was still standing in her place at the table,
papers held loosely in her hands, but the others had left and
He
was being unusually tentative, Sam noted, nodding promptly and circling the
table.
Sam
waited, silently and motionlessly trying to force down a rising wave of anxiety.
She couldn't remember the last time he had wanted to speak privately
with her... maybe after her father had joined the Tok'ra, or perhaps after
their capture at the hands of Hathor. But certainly not lately. He'd
spoken to all three of them after Daniel's ascension, and naturally he would
meet with Colonel O'Neill on a regular basis. But there was nothing regular about this, and
Sam had a sneaking suspicion that
"This
is about Colonel O'Neill, isn't it?"
She
wasn't aware that she had spoken until she saw the look on
"Yes,"
said the General simply, discomfort still lingering in the room like a bad
smell. He rose from his chair and stood
behind it, his hands constantly moving, belying a quantity of nervous energy
that was strange for him. "Yes,
it is. To tell you the truth, Major... I'm finding myself questioning the wisdom of letting
him back into the field."
A
strange relief fluttered through Sam, relief that she hadn't been the only
one with doubts, but it was followed quickly by remorse, a hollow pain in
her chest that made her sit up straighter still.
Somehow, even though
Why
was he telling her this? Was he supposed
to be telling her this?
The
General seemed to see and understand, because his reply was far more sympathetic
to her naïveté than it should have been. "He was a younger man then," he said,
leaving the rest to hang unspoken. Yes,
the Colonel had been younger, and his life had been a very different one back
then. He'd had a wife, a son, a family
to think about, to keep him strong, to give him something
to strive for.
Then
there was the fact that the Colonel's torture had only been the latest in
a string of decidedly unpleasant events over the past few months. He'd lost a close friend and teammate and had
had a hell of a time finding someone to fill the later role. He'd hurt his knee pretty badly, wounding his
morale in the process. Almost drowned. Been infected with a deadly disease. Become a host to a Tok'ra... at his second in
command's urging, no less. And then this. His run
of bad luck had been nothing short of phenomenal, and maybe it was a sign
that it was time for him to hang up his combat boots and call it a career
for the final time.
God
knew she wasn't ready for that to happen.
But
it wasn't about her, was it?
"Doctor
Fraiser is convinced that Colonel O'Neill is physically fit for duty, and
he appears to agree with her. And I
trust both of them."
Sam
held back the first thing that came to mind, considered it, tested it for
impropriety, and finally said it aloud: "I always do, sir." Said crispy, unblinkingly, so that he would
understand that she understood what she was telling him.
As though he didn't already.
- - -
The
first thing that Jack noticed on the other side of the wormhole - before the
sights, the sounds, the smells - was the heat.
He was certain, in retrospect, that he had actually felt the warmth
of the alien sun before the Stargate had completely put his body back together.
He knew that the heat wasn't dangerous - it was in the high nineties,
according to the MALP, probably just a seasonably warm summer day on P3F -
but emerging from the Gate was like stepping out of the freezer and into the
oven.
The
stone platform in front of the Stargate was narrow, already crowded by the
DHD set off to the immediate left, and he moved quickly down to the next step
to avoid a pile up at the event horizon. Carter
was next, then Jonas, then Teal'c, and while they regained their bearings
Jack pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on.
He
hadn't expected the stairs leading down from the Stargate to be so narrow
or so steep, but they were both: gray marble, no more than a foot wide and
half as long, trailing down the side of the hill in a straight, neat progression. There were no rails, no handholds, and while
the grass on either side was soft, the angle was severe. If one missed a step, they wouldn't so much
roll to the valley floor as plummet.
"I
guess these guys never heard of handicap access," Jack commented, taking
the next step as the others fell in behind him.
Carter
had the radio and was keeping an open channel, although she wasn't saying
much of anything yet. Jack's annoyance
at the General's sudden need to babysit his premier
team hadn't abated, but he told himself that it would... eventually, and the
important thing was to watch his mouth until everything got back to normal.
It always did, and Jack didn't want a black mark on his record - or
in
Given
time, and work, that mindset would go away.
Eventually.
It
always did.
As
they made the downward trek in silence, Jack found himself examining the village
that lay below. It was quaint, in a
rickety shack kind of way. The heat
didn't bother the local low-growing foliage - it was green and strong-looking
- although from this vantage point there didn't seem to be a single tree in
the area. Either the natives had used
them all up for construction lumber, or they'd transported timber from another
part of the planet. A hard-packed dirt
road cut through the greenery, leading from the base of the stone steps directly
into the heart of the village. It was
a kind of main street; most of the buildings were huddled around the footpath
with very few outlying structures and it reminded him of something out of
a western. Like John Wayne might come
strolling out to meet them any second.
Jack
knew from Carter's briefing that some larger buildings lay at the terminus
of the road, possibly barns or storage sheds judging by the additional presence
of fields and gardens. From his descending
vantage point, however, he couldn't actually see the opposite end of the road.
Sweat
was beginning to accumulate on Jack's neck by the time they reached the ground;
down in the valley there was even less of a breeze than there had been in
the higher elevation. As he reached
for his radio, Teal'c had already begun scouting the area for tracks. Not much in-depth investigation was needed;
even Jonas was able to see that the grass on either side had been worn away,
that the dirt road had been scuffed by many pairs of shoes... and not long
ago. "
Teal'c
shook his head in consternation. "I
believe so," he said slowly, "but this area has been well traveled.
It is difficult to tell."
A
plain 'yes' or 'no' would have been nice, but he'd work with what he had. Glancing briefly at Carter, he lifted the radio
to his mouth. "We're about to
move into the village, sir. So far nothing out of the ordinary. There's been a lot of traffic through here lately,
though, and Teal'c thinks some of the tracks might be
"Proceed
with caution, SG-1" came
Well,
duh. What was this, a training exercise?
Jack paused, collected himself, and replied with a "Yes, sir,"
clipped and stoic enough to make even Teal'c proud.
He told himself - again - that this was just a trial phase, just a
short period of doubt, something he could ride out until everyone decided
he was still sane and capable and moved on to bigger, better things.
But the General's apparent lack of trust in Jack to choreograph even
this simple mission bothered him. A lot.
Aware that they were both out in the open and within staff weapon range of the nearest building, Jack decided that, for the time being, remaining in motion would be the best strategy. They would do a quick sweep of the main drag, taking note of anything of interest, and come back when they were sure nothing was amiss.
But
something had to be amiss.
"This
is weird," Jonas mumbled, taking a few tentative steps down the road. "Do we know for a fact that the entire
population wasn't killed by some... disease, some biological agent?"
Carter
tensed slightly, almost involuntarily, but her answer was ready. "That wouldn't account for a complete lack
of people. If it was some kind of fast-acting
plague, well, there'd be signs. Filth
in the streets... bodies in the streets. Signs of looting."
But
there were no such signs. As the team
drew closer, Jack could see that the streets were almost unnaturally clean
- no trash, no errant debris. Doors
were closed. Glass windows framed by
ruffled curtains had been pulled shut. Something
virulent and deadly usually brought a measure of chaotic panic with it, but
this place was neat, orderly.
"We
can't rule out the possibility that the people from this planet were forcibly
taken," Carter added, although she sounded doubtful of her own hypothesis.
If
They
started to move down the main road, keeping to the edges, wary of open windows,
listening carefully for sounds of life within the buildings. Jack and Teal'c took one side of the street,
Carter and Jonas the other, although occasionally two would cross over so
that Jack found himself paired with the Major and then Jonas for a few minutes.
Their progress was methodical and nearly silent: they would approach a building,
check for obvious signs of habitation, and then open the front door, leaning
in for a quick look. Although the majority
of the doors were closed none of the buildings were actually locked or barred
against intruders.
Jack
soon realized that almost all of the buildings at this end of the road were
what they appeared to be: homes. All
had similar floor plans; the front door opened onto a sitting room and a kitchen
with a small fireplace, both dark and shadowed but somehow cozy. When Jack and Teal'c took an extra moment to
explore the entirety of the fifth house down, they discovered a short, narrow
hallway leading to three cramped bedrooms in the back.
There
were beds, neatly made.
There
were desks, stacked with neat sheaves of paper covered in unintelligible script.
There
were closets, and clothes - tunics and pants and skirts in neutral colors
- hung in tidy rows from wooden pegs. Only
a few of the pegs were empty.
Jack
paused in the second bedroom, listening to the house quietly settling, listening
to Teal'c's soft footsteps in the front of the house.
He reached into the closet, his fingers closing around a pair of doe-brown
pants and pulling them off their peg. He
held them up by the waistband, confirming what he'd suspected: child's clothing. Maybe a little boy's. As late as two days ago local time, some little
boy had made his bed, cleaned up his desk and checked to make sure his clothes
were hanging neatly, and then... then what? He'd left the room, the house, the village...
so why hadn't he come back?
- - -
Sam
had Jonas Quinn stand just inside the doorway while she checked the seventh
building. It wasn't that she didn't
trust him to provide backup... just not competent backup. The Colonel had finally relented and given Jonas
a Zat gun for missions, and he had received the mandatory training using
both the Zat and conventional firearms, however...
Well,
if things got nasty, she didn't want him getting hurt. Or in the way. Right.
This
house, however, was just as empty as the last six on her side of the street.
Empty front rooms, empty bedrooms, and empty everything between.
Oh, it was still populated by things,
of course: there were clothes in the bedrooms, pots and pans in the kitchen,
decorative rugs on the hardwood floors. But
as for the people who had presumably worn those clothes, cooked in those pots,
walked on those rugs... not a sign. No
bodies, alive or otherwise. No blood.
No indications of violence.
Sam
motioned for Jonas to follow her in.
He
entered cautiously, although not as much now as during the first few checks.
She watched as his eyes darted over the darkened family area, the kitchen
nook and the fireplace with its shadowy hearth.
"Still nothing?" he asked worriedly, as though expecting
that she would reveal some grisly, gruesome discovery in the back room.
"Nothing,"
she confirmed.
They
stepped back into the oppressive sunlight, and moved on to the next building.
- - -
The
sun rose in the sky, and the temperature climbed. There was a complete lack of a breeze in the
valley, and the air felt thick. Again
Jack wondered if the village's abandonment wasn't as sinister as it looked.
Scratch the picnic idea; maybe they'd just taken a field trip to the
local watering hole to splash around and soak up the rays.
But
that felt wrong. Something had happened
here, he just wasn't sure what.
Finally
he stopped counting the houses, and although his searches were no less thorough,
he finally sent Teal'c on ahead to the next building in order to speed up
the process. He motioned to Carter
that she should keep Jonas with her, however; 'better safe than sorry' was
one of the few cliches that Jack not only tolerated but loved, cherished,
lived by. Jonas was... observant, Jack
had to give him that, but exactly what he observed didn't necessarily follow
any tenet of military procedure.
As
Teal'c disappeared into the home next door, Jack peered in through the windows
of his building, scanning for signs of movement or anything out of the ordinary
from all the prior houses. Nothing
jumped out or stirred in the slightest: there were only shadows and the furniture
that cast them.
Jack
moved to the door and pushed it open. Waited
to see if there was anyone inside who was going to take a shot at him, decided
against it, and then stepped over the threshold.
Darkness
and the now-familiar floor plan greeted him.
Jack blinked, taking a second to let his eyes readjust to the reduced
light. Most of the sunshine in the
house came through the front window. There
were others - in the kitchen, sitting room, and in each of the bedrooms -
but heavy canvas shades had been pulled over each of them. In every house so far, the doors to the bedrooms
had been left standing open, but even so only a thin trickle of light had
managed to find its way into the connecting hallway--
Jack
leaned down that hallway, and stopped.
Three bedrooms, three doors. Two were open,
but the one in the middle had been closed.
Probably nothing. Probably just a coincidence.
Over on Carter's side of the street, maybe most of the bedroom doors
had been closed. It was just a kid's
room. Coincidence.
Still...
Standing
to the side, Jack pushed open the bedroom door as he had opened the first. He paused in the hallway for a minute, listening,
waiting, and then peered inside the small room. The closet, the bed, the desk... he stepped
through the doorway -- and that small act seemed to ignite a flurry of motion.
Something
had been crouched down beside the desk, hiding in the shadows and every bit
as still as one of them, but suddenly it sprang up as though startled, and
a second dark shape fell towards Jack. It
was a stout shape - five feet tall and maybe a foot square - that had been
propped up against the wall, and either the surprised
creature had knocked it over accidentally... or it had pushed the thing at
him as a diversion.
The
beam - because that was what it felt like: rough, solid - was heavy, but it
hadn't come at him with enough force to do damage. Jack was able to catch the thing in his hands
and push it aside, letting it continue its fall into a different part of the
room, and it hit the ground with a substantial thump. He ignored it, focusing on the other shape,
the one that had moved first, the one he was sure was alive.
Although
it seemed as though the beam had been used as a diversionary tactic, the creature
didn't seem to be in a hurry to get away. Hunched over in the corner of the room, it flailed
and flustered, pressed itself further against the wall, and finally gave a
fearful squeak. "Don't touch me!"
Jack,
bringing his P90 up to bear, faltered momentarily.
The
thing was human?
He'd
attributed some cleverness to it, but certainly his first impression had been
that the creature had been just that: a creature, not human. It certainly hadn't moved as one. It still wasn't.
"Don't
touch me!" it said again, louder. Male.
Jack
reached across the room and yanked the canvas away from the window, never
taking his eyes off the figure in the corner.
Bright, heavy afternoon light immediately filled the room, but the
dark shape was not miraculously transformed into a man.
It
was a man, of course... human, or at least
humanoid... about as human as Jonas was, in any case. Yet Jack's second impression was that he was
looking at some bizarre hybrid between a man and a rodent. The... person
was dressed all in brown, varying shades but definitely all in the brown family:
tan pants, a dark shirt, and a black-brown overcoat that covered up the majority
of his wardrobe. And the color coordination
didn't stop there. His mangled hair
was a mousy brown, his prickly beard a matching shade, and his eyes - wide,
terrified, unintelligent - were the color of mud. A hairy little muskrat dressed in his Sunday
best, thought Jack, taking a step back.
The
Muskrat had been holding his hands out, but now he tucked them in against
his chest, under the coat.
"Don't
touch me!" It was almost a scream
this time, as though Jack were moving closer instead of further away.
- - -
Stepping
back out onto the hot road, Sam heard a voice.
She couldn't make out words, but it was distinctly a voice, and not
the Colonel's or Teal'c's. A strange man's voice, raised
in terror, which in turn raised the hair on the back of her neck. Literally.
Jonas,
directly behind her, stopped in the doorway.
"Sam..." he began, as though unsure as to what the sound
had been. But she didn't answer; across
the street, she'd seen Teal'c dash out of one house and into another, and
it was towards that second building she ran.
- - -
Jack
heard heavy footsteps in the front of the house and he tensed, wondering if
the Muskrat had called reinforcements, but a quick glance down the hallway
showed that it was only Teal'c, looking fierce, and behind him Carter and
Jonas. They looked more worried than fierce, but he
would take it.
Not
that he felt threatened by the man in front of him. He was short - even standing straight Jack doubted
he would clear five-six - and small in stature, and while he had quite a set
of lungs on him he didn't see liable to attack. Fear was standing out clearly in his otherwise
bleary eyes, and while fear could make some people do rash and stupid things
this person seemed content to cower and shriek.
Teal'c
abruptly filled the doorway, barely able to fit into the room, and Carter
hovered just behind him. The brown
man saw them and backed away, crashing into the desk but not seeming to feel
the impact. "Stay away!"
he howled, the pitch of his voice so high that Jack half expected the windowpane
to crack and shatter.
Deciding
that the Muskrat didn't pose any huge threat - and that this had gone on long
enough - Jack relaxed his hold on his weapon, bringing up his hands in a universal
'we come in peace' gesture. "Calm
down," he said as nicely as was possible. "We're not going to hurt you."
Still
hunched over, the Muskrat glared at him. "Don't
touch me," he said again, although he was no longer shouting.
"Believe
me, I have no desire to," said Jack truthfully, motioning for Teal'c
to step back, hopefully without trampling Carter.
"Now why don't you come out of there and..."
"We
just want to talk to you," came Jonas' voice from somewhere in the hallway.
Fear
slowly hardening into suspicion and a little resentment, the man's brown eyes
darted around the room with rodent quickness.
"Just talking, no touching," he said sharply.
"You
have my word," Jack swore, wondering if the Muskrat was self-aware enough
to detect the sarcasm.
Slowly
he backed down the hallway, Teal'c, Carter and Jonas following his lead, spilling
out into the sitting room. The Major
immediately began rolling the shades off the windows and pushing the curtains
aside in both that room and the kitchen, brightening the area considerably.
Still
wrapped in his long coat, hands hidden, neck pulled down, the Muskrat slunk
down the hall after them, his beady eyes focused primarily on Jack. He blinked and stalled when he encountered the
sunlight, squinted, and then stepped reluctantly into the front of the house.
Jonas
took that moment to step forward, sending one of those damned hopeful, questioning
looks Jack's way. A part of Jack rebelled against letting Jonas
do the 'first contact thing', wary as he was of letting Quinn pick up too
much of Daniel's mantle, but... the guy had kind of proved himself, in Antarctica,
with the ice woman. He was an able
communicator at the very least, and if he actually wanted to talk to the Muskrat...
well, that made exactly one of them. "Go
for it," Jack said with the utmost graciousness, waving a hand towards
the brown man. "Knock yourself
out."
"Hopefully
not," answered Jonas, sounding puzzled.
Ignoring Jack's pained look he stepped forward, startling the Muskrat
who took a half-step back towards the hallway.
Jonas immediately held up his hands in a placating gesture, his voice
low and soft as though he was indeed trying to talk down a dangerous animal.
"It's okay. We're not going to hurt you. We just want to find out more about you: who
you are, how you got here."
A
spark of interest flickered in the brown man's eyes, driving away the paranoid
fear for a moment. "This is my
house," he said defensively.
"It
is?" asked Jonas, and he sounded as surprised as Jack felt. It didn't seem common - or likely - for a man
to be hiding in a back bedroom of his own house. A vagrant or squatter, or
a survivor of some horrible event, yes.
Homeowner, no.
Nevertheless the Muskrat nodded vehemently, and Jonas moved on. "Well, that's good to know." He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of
the team, perhaps realizing for the first time that he had an attentive audience.
Clearing his throat, he looked back at the man.
"My name's Jonas Quinn. This
is Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter, and Teal'c," he added, gesturing to
each of them in turn, although the man in brown never looked away from Jack.
"Can you tell us who you are?"
The
person in question looked sharply at Jonas, indignant. "Of course I can. Dagin. Dagin Lor. That's my name."
That
was enough for now. Jack pulled Jonas
back with a brush of his hand, reassuming control of the conversation now
that the Muskrat - Dagin - seemed slightly calmer and more intelligible. "So, Dagin... what can you tell us about
what happened here?"
Immediately
the man seemed to tense, and although his shoulders had still been pulled
down, now he hunched even more dramatically as though to ward off an imaginary
blow. The fear resurfaced in his face,
and his lips quivered beneath the beard. "I
saw them," he sputtered. "I
saw them being killed... taken away, but so many killed..."
Jack
felt a twinge in his stomach, and in his mind's eye he saw the mythical little
boy with the neat room and the doe-brown pants.
His subconscious had unwillingly conjured up an image of what that
boy might look like, and now he saw the kid running, screaming, falling, pursued
by...
"Who
came?" he asked sharply.
Dagin
blinked. "What?"
"Who
did you see?" Jack demanded. "Were
they
Dagin
eyed Teal'c for a long moment, and then nodded.
"A symbol, although not that one," he agreed. "You say they're called
"That's
right. And you say they killed some
of the people here, and took the rest... through the Stargate?"
The
Muskrat's eyes slid out of focus. "I
saw them," he mumbled. "The
women, children... they all went up the stairs and into the gateway..."
Sympathetic
silence settled over the group for the moment, and Jack tried to forget about
the screaming boy by focusing on the feel of sweat droplets gliding down his
back. It was Carter who first broke
the hush, stepping in between Jack and Jonas, her voice sober but strong. "Why didn't they take you?"
Dagin
Lor looked up, and again - in a small and desolate
voice - asked, "What?"
"Why
didn't you go with them?"
Almost
doubling over now, wrapping his arms around himself, the man whimpered, babbled.
"They wouldn't let me. I
wanted to go, I didn't want to stay, but they wouldn't let me.
They made me stay, I had to stay, and it's been so frightening... I
keep seeing them, even though they're not here, I keep seeing them, and they
wouldn't let me go. They wouldn't let
me go. They wouldn't let me go!"
- - -
The
unspoken consensus was that the top priority was to get this Dagin Lor back to the SGC. He
not only looked unkempt; upon closer inspection, he appeared unhealthy, as
though he hadn't eaten or bathed or even slept in days. He also seemed emotionally unstable to the extreme;
even though he agreed to go home with SG-1, he would still scream out, at
intermittent intervals, his desire not to be touched.
There
was still the rest of the village to be checked, however, and Colonel O'Neill
didn't look pleased at letting this now mundane task go uncompleted. Sam thought she understood; he didn't want to
do any less than his absolute best, or give anything less than 110%. He didn't want to give
"Teal'c
and I can finish up here, sir," she offered as soon as the first sign
of indecision flickered across his face. "You
and Jonas get Dagin to the infirmary, and we'll catch up."
If
he noticed that she was all but giving him orders, he said nothing. He merely glanced at the man in question, who
was sitting on a chair in the kitchen - his
kitchen, if he was to be believed - rocking back and forth with his head in
his hands. Teal'c and Jonas were keeping
watch/standing guard... although not too close, of course. "I don't know," said the Colonel after
a moment. "Now we know for sure
that there were
"Sir," she interrupted firmly, well aware that she was treading on increasingly thin ice. "We'll be fine."
The
hesitancy - and, Sam realized in hindsight, the vulnerability - abruptly left
his face, and he gave her a hard look. "What
did
The
word "What?" slipped out before Sam realized how much she sounded
like Dagin Lor, and she bit down on her tongue.
The
Colonel rolled his eyes to the ceiling and looked back at her almost reluctantly.
"I was waiting for you," he said, grudgingly, "after
the briefing."
So
he'd seen the General call her into his office, and he'd made the all-too-accurate
assumption that their short chat had been about him. Well there was no reason to tell him otherwise,
no reason to lie, as long as she left out a few choice details. "He wanted me to keep an eye on you.
I said I would. That's all." Not a lie, exactly, just a half-truth, and for
his own good.
"Keep
an eye on me?" He scowled. "You know, it might not actually say Colonel
on my uniform, but that doesn't change the fact that I am. I'm
supposed to be keeping an eye on you
guys."
"We
watch out for each other," Sam retorted, feeling bold. Or, perhaps, it was the stifling heat. "It was just a reminder, sir. An unnecessary one. The General's just... a little concerned about
all of us."
The
Colonel looked ready to disagree with that, but something else caught his
attention. "Is he still on the
radio?"
Sam
shook her head. "No sir. He signed off right before the Gate closed on
its own. Of course, that was right
before..." She indicated Dagin,
still wrapped up in his own misery.
"So
it would have been about the time I was playing Dodge the Musk--" He broke off,
shaking his head, still looking perturbed at having missed the message. That unfamiliar look of uncertainty fluttered
back over his expression, and he sighed. "Fine,
Carter. You win this one.
But don't expect to make a habit out of it."
Trying
not to let him see how pleased she was - and failing - Sam nodded. "It won't take long, sir."
"It
better not," he murmured, breaking away from their meeting place in the
family room and striding towards the others.
"Jonas and I'll check in before we go through," he said more
loudly. "You find anything out
of the ordinary, you tell me right away. And... be careful."
Resisting
the urge to tell him how much he sounded like General Hammond, Sam merely
nodded again. "Yes sir. Come on, Teal'c," she added, motioning
to him. "We're going to finish
up the sweep."
Teal'c
said nothing, inclining his head in acknowledgment, and Sam followed him through
the open doorway. The heat outside
was worse than ever - maybe it got this warm in Texas or Arizona, but not
in the Colorado weather she had acclimated to - but there was a strange relief
in getting away from Dagin Lor.
- - -
Even
though they had checked the first four-fifths of the village, Jack didn't
feel comfortable simply strolling down the middle of the road back to the
Stargate. Dagin's harried voice - "I saw them being killed... taken away,
but so many killed..." - had left him edgy and uncomfortable about
the possibility of lingering
A
few times during the walk Jonas tried to engage Dagin in conversation, but
the Muskrat would have none of it. He
seemed preoccupied with Jack, staring at him with eyes that would seem rheumy
one moment and eagle-sharp the next. Jack
pretended to ignore the other man's attention as he ignored the Russians on
base: determinedly, resolutely, but not completely. Every once in a while he would give the brown
man a quick glance, and every time he found himself surprised anew by the
man's appearance. He'd seen plenty
of survivors, before, plenty of refugees, but this person... well, he didn't
seem sane. Not insane in the power-hungry
Goa'uld way, or even in the power-hungry Jonas Hanson way... just plain old
nuts.
Too
quickly - although without incident - the three men arrived at the end of
the main road, at the foot of the stairs that led up to the Stargate but looked
as though they might also continue on to heaven.
Dagin examined the marble steps warily, as though unconvinced that
they were structurally sound, but didn't seem overwhelmingly awed by the Stargate
itself. "I saw them," he
said again, not speaking to either Jack or Jonas, speaking to himself, his
voice a harsh rasp.
Despite
himself, Jack felt a kernel of emotion emerge, a sensation he'd never felt
towards the Russian team. Sympathy. Sympathy for this sad, strange little man.
Jonas
went up first, as the steps were only wide enough for one, and Jack motioned
for Dagin to follow him. Narrowing
his eyes, all but snarling, the brown man did so and Jack fell in behind him. Dagin looked back over his shoulder so many
times during the ascent that Jack expected him to trip on his coat or lose
his balance and go careening down the hillside, but he didn't.
Once
more on the topmost platform, the three stood to the side and Jonas dialed
the Gate while Jack pulled out his radio.
"Carter, Teal'c, come in," he intoned, his words punctuated
by sound of chevrons locking into place.
Silence
greeted him, as heavy and intolerable as the escalating temperature.
Jonas
paused before pressing in the center crystal and Jack waved at him impatiently
to finish, making sure Dagin hadn't strayed into the vaporizing zone while
bringing the radio to his mouth again. "Teal'c,
Carter, report."
Nothing.
The
Stargate engaged, whooshed, puddled. Another
glance at the Muskrat showed that he was still more interested in his own
thoughts than the alien technological marvel about three inches away from
his nose.
Several
lights on the MALP began to glow, and Jack knew
But
at that moment the radio came to life, spitting static briefly before resolving
into his second in command's slightly winded voice. "Sorry, sir, we're here."
"What
happened?"
"Ah..." Even over the radio she sounded embarrassed.
"I thought I heard somebody in the well, sir, and we were checking
it out. But it was just an animal."
"Nothing
that's going to be following you home, I hope."
He
thought he heard her chuckle. "No
sir, it's still down there."
Jack
nodded, even though she couldn't see him, and that reminded him of the people
who were still there to see him. Closing
the channel momentarily, he nodded at the GDO in Jonas' hand. "You put in the right code?" he asked,
purposely trying to sound rude and judgmental. Jack had agreed with
"Yes, Colonel." Jonas, as always,
was guileless, although Jack had a sneaking - albeit unfounded - suspicion
that Jonas was taking offense at
times like these and was filing away every affront to be repaid in some ultimate
revenge.
"Well..." Jack nodded to Dagin Lor,
who was now grimacing at the Stargate and muttering under his breath. "Take him through, turn him over to Fraiser.
Let
To
his credit, Jonas was starting to get the hang of the whole 'orders' thing;
even though he obviously wanted to respond he didn't, instead gesturing for
Dagin to precede him through the wormhole.
The brown man didn't protest; he stepped into the event horizon as
though it was the most natural thing in the world. Jack had more
than a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Dagin Lor had
not only seen the Gate in action but perhaps had used it before... and even
understood how it worked.
Which was stupid, because this guy was obviously more than a little loony.
Then
again, hadn't some said the same thing about Carter?
It
was worth considering.
Reluctantly
Jonas followed Dagin, leaving Jack alone on the platform next to the gently
rippling Stargate. It was quiet. Hot. Lonely. He thought he
could see Carter and Teal'c moving down the road, and initially he had planned
on waiting for them, but suddenly it occurred to him that he was doing the
same thing he had been so exasperated about
Either
that, or they'd attribute his sudden clinginess to
his 'ordeal', and by God if he heard that word one more time, if he even thought it...
He
raised his radio again, but Carter beat him to the punch. "Sir, it's going to take us a good ten
minutes, why don't you just..."
She
trailed off, leaving the channel open, letting him 'interrupt' her.
"Right,"
he 'interrupted'. And because he couldn't
think of anything better: "See you later."
Hoping
again that Jonas was as good at remembering codes as he was at observing obscure
and trivial details, Jack stepped into the Stargate and let it whisk him out
of the hot sun and back into the cool underground bunker.
- Two -
"It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant
of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us.
Perhaps we have co-tenants in this house we live in."
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Don't
touch me don't touch me don't touch me!"
Jack
sighed, taking in the alarmed expressions of the airmen around him as he approached
the infirmary. He'd heard the high-pitched
squeals himself before even stepping out of the elevator, and they only got
louder as he approached. Obviously
Dagin had been sent ahead to the infirmary as soon as he and Jonas had come
through, but Jack had hoped that Fraiser would have had the crazed little
man tied down and drugged into blissful silence by this point.
Sharing
a commiserating glance with Sergeant Siler - standing stock-still in the middle
of the hallway, looking over his shoulder at the infirmary as though expecting
some horrific monster to emerge from it - Jack wondered if coming here in
the first place had been such a good idea.
Dagin wasn't his responsibility any longer, and it wasn't as though
he even liked the guy enough to check in on him.
He supposed he was just killing time;
Entering
the infirmary, Jack was greeted with a quasi-familiar sight: Dagin, now stripped
of his overcoat, was huddled in the far corner near one of the EKG machines,
hunched down and scowling furiously at Fraiser and two of her befuddled nurses.
He looked every bit as wild and deranged in the harsh artificial lighting
as he had in the diffused sunshine and shadows.
"Doc?" Jack casually sidled up to Fraiser,
pushing his hands into his pockets. "Do
we need to get security in here?"
"I
really don't think that's necessary, sir," Fraiser replied, her eyes
on Dagin, her voice calm and controlled. "He
seems to become more agitated whenever somebody enters the room."
The
hint was hardly subtle, but Jack ignored it.
In response to his silence the doctor finally tore her eyes away from
her would-be patient - who was now hissing at the nurses like a threatened
cockroach - and looked up at him. "Jonas
said he was like this on the planet."
"Yeah,"
Jack confirmed, realizing that her statement had also been partly a question.
"I guess..." He lowered his voice slightly, "I guess
we should cut him some slack. From
what we can figure his entire village was rounded up by
Fraiser
nodded thoughtfully. "He hasn't
been violent, exactly, just backed himself into that corner. I'd planned on sedating him, but now I'm wondering
if it'd do more harm than good. He
could very easily start seeing us as the bad guys, and if he's having post-traumatic
stress symptoms now..."
She
trailed off and abruptly moved away from Jack, towards the phone on the back
wall. He let her go, vaguely heard
her placing a call to the General, but the mention of PTSD made the sterile
infirmary feel a little colder than usual.
No one had brought it up yet - to him, about him - but he'd consciously
been waiting for that shoe to drop. He'd
even composed a little speech in his head, a litany of non-symptoms: "No, I haven't had nightmares or flashbacks,
I've been sleeping fine, no depression, haven't been more irritable than usual,
haven't chopped off anybody's head, and when Jake came to visit Carter last
week I didn't fly off the handle at him because he's a Tok'ra and therefore
reminded me of Kanan."
Sometimes
he was worried merely by how easily he could rattle off that list.
Paranoid. He was being paranoid.
Fraiser
returned from the phone. "I just
spoke to General Hammond. He agreed
that it may be best to put Dagin in an isolation room for the time being. Normally I wouldn't suggest that to someone
who's just seen his entire community wiped out, but as worried as he seems
to be about people touching him... it'll at least give him some time to calm
down."
Jack
nodded, trying to blink away the likely-glazed expression on his face before
the good doctor could notice. "Well,
I'd love to stay and help, but I've got a briefing to get to as soon as Carter
and Teal'c make it back. Sure you don't
think some security is a good idea?"
Fraiser
looked at him wryly. "I'll call
ahead and have the SF's clear the corridors between here and there, just in
case, but I have a feeling once we tell him where we're taking him and why...
it'll be like chasing a rat through a maze."
Jack
smiled as he left. Totalitarian power
monger or not, his and Fraiser's thinking could
be eerily similar at times.
He'd
just stepped into the elevator when it happened for the first time.
- - -
Running. He was running.
He
was still in the empty elevator, a very closed, confined
space, but still he was running. He
could feel the ground under his feet, feel his legs pumping, his arms close
to his sides, could feel a burning pain in his side caused by exertion and
lack of oxygen...
But
at the same time, he could also feel the floor of the elevator beneath his
boots. Solid. He could even feel the motion of the car as
it slowly lowered him further into the bowels of the mountain.
When
he blinked, all he could see were the elevator walls. They remained at a constant distance, not drawing
closer, as they would have if he'd been moving towards them, much less running towards them.
But
he was still running.
His
stomach lurched, and it wasn't just the motion of the car.
Neither
was it the motion of a man running full-tilt, almost in a panic.
It
was the motion of both, because he was feeling both, simultaneously.
Jack
stumbled forward and hit the stop button on the elevator, then fell with a
decided lack of grace against the back wall.
Stupid, maybe; maybe he should have aimed for the infirmary instead,
maybe he should want those doors to open as soon as possible, but he didn't.
He didn't. He was out of control, completely, utterly,
felt like he was losing his mind, felt like he was going to scream - and he
wasn't the screaming kind - and he didn't want anybody to see him like this.
Not Fraiser. Not nobody.
He
closed his eyes and tried to breathe.
The
other him - the running him - tried to breathe too.
Something
changed, very subtly, but it changed. Previously
he'd been running on an even surface, but not any longer.
Now his legs strained even more, muscles burning along with his lungs.
Stairs. He was running
up stairs. There was a terrible, critical
urgency to his pace, evident not only by how hard he ran but also by tension
and anxiety and very real fear, not the fear of insanity from Jack In The
Elevator, but a fear leaking through from this other him, this other person,
this very real fear of being killed.
And
then --
Oh
God.
--
Pain blossoming in his back and moving through him like a poison: fast, lethal,
and without mercy. Familiar
pain. Crippling
pain. He stopped running, he
fell, the stairs, unseen, rose up to meet him, metal connected with flesh
and bone and teeth and it hurt like hell, and that hurt was just enough to
shock him out of the initial pain. He
forced himself up, face tilted sightlessly towards whatever was at the top
of the stairs, but before he could move towards that goal the pain came again...
But
then it was gone.
Not
because it was over.
Because he was dead. The other him
had just been killed.
He
knew. He knew what dying felt like
and he knew it all too well.
At
some point during all this he had opened his eyes, as though to reassure himself
of this reality: a place where no one was after him, a place where he was
relatively safe, a place where he was alive.
Now, wildly disoriented, more than a little sick,
and scared out of his mind by what he had just seen/felt, Jack closed them
again.
When
he opened them next, he was standing in the briefing room.
- - -
Alone. He was blessedly alone. The room was empty and
Jack
waited for the sensation of having two bodies to return, but it didn't. He moved slowly towards the nearest chair and
sank into it, leaning over, trying not to throw up. Of course, considering he had no memory of moving
from the elevator to this room he could already have thrown up several times...
but judging by the lack of nastiness in his mouth, he somehow doubted it.
He
wondered who might have seen him.
He
looked at his watch... and caught his breath when he saw the time. By his reckoning, almost fifteen minutes had
passed since he had first stepped into the elevator. He remembered a portion of that, of course -
wished he didn't, but he did - but most of that time was... gone. Just... gone.
Jack
sat up, sat back in the chair, and told himself that he should be used to
weird time anomalies and subspace stuff by now, not because he actually understood
it - because he really didn't care to; that was what Carter was for - but
because junk like that was painfully close to commonplace these days. Reality, his reality, was not now what it had
been six years ago. Time and space,
even if he didn't understand how or why, were immeasurably different now...
for him, for everyone who had seen what he had seen.
'Normal' had been stretched past its limits. 'Strange' was just another way of saying 'different'
now.
Oh,
this was different.
And
the hard truth was that... he was pretty sure this didn't have anything to
do with weird time anomalies and subspace stuff.
He was pretty sure it had a lot more to do with The Misadventures of
Kanan the Tok'ra and his Lowly Host, Jack.
He
didn't want to think about it. He nearly
refused to think about it. But it had to be done. He'd been in the infirmary, listening to Fraiser
prattle on about post-traumatic stress disorder as it pertained to Dagin Lor's behavior. And
Jack had freaked, a little. Mild freakage, but maybe it had been enough.
Then
he'd gone into the elevator. A little box, all by himself. Walls surrounding him. No immediate escape. That sounded... familiar. He hadn't thought about it before this, hadn't
even pondered the prospect of claustrophobia because it seemed so childish
and, well, trivial, but maybe being in that enclosed space had been enough
to trigger memories... flashbacks... of Baal's planet.
Capture. Torture. Running. And yes, there had been stairs in the Goa'uld's fortress, and he had run up some of them.
And
he had died on that planet. Repeatedly.
He'd
jinxed himself just by thinking about it.
Psyched himself into a mental condition. Jesus, and Hammond
had actually trusted him to lead a mission offworld, to have Carter and Teal'c
and Jonas relying on him in a completely unpredictable situation where anything
could have happened, and what if this... seizure had come over him then? They would all have gotten killed, that was
what, and it would have been because of him.
Unless he was wrong. Unless there was something else at work here. If reality wasn't really reality where Stargate
travel was concerned, why immediately jump to the most obvious and mundane
of all possible conclusions? Anything
could be going on here, up to and including him having a mental breakdown,
but there was no reason he shouldn't explore the other options... for his
own good. Slowly he pushed himself out of the chair, still
anticipating the next attack, and slowly he stepped towards the window, trying
to look beyond the walls, give himself a sense of space.
The
Stargate looked back at him, meanly.
The Stargate. P3F... whatever it was. There'd been stairs there, a whole lot of them.
He hadn't exactly bounded up them, but...
Jack
felt his brain spasm, actually spasm, like a wormhole doing the jumping thing
from one Gate to another.
Carter and Teal'c. They were still
on the planet. What if what had happened
to him in the elevator... what if that had been some kind of premonition -
not that he believed in ESP or second sight, exactly, but if he believed in
aliens and space ships and time loops why not that, too - some kind of vision
of something that was going to happen to Teal'c and the Major. Or something that was happening
now.
He
turned away from the window abruptly, seized by the need to tell someone even
if he came out looking like an ass, but then he found himself staring at his
watch again. Fifteen minutes had passed,
he reminded himself, and there was no way that Carter and Teal'c could have
taken that long to get back to the Gate... even if they had stopped to smell
the proverbial roses, which they wouldn't do.
They knew that everyone expected them back within minutes of Jack and
Jonas, and if they found something worthy of further exploration they would
have dialed up the Stargate and notified
He
also knew, with a feeling like a lead balloon inflating inside his stomach,
that if the two missing members of his team were still on that planet, they
were dead.
He
didn't bother going straight to the control room for the answer; he pounced
on the first airman he saw outside the briefing room door, a young man named
Rios with dark hair and close-growing eyebrows.
"Is SG-1 back yet?" he heard himself bark.
Rios
started and snapped to attention, obviously confused by the question, and
Jack's mind caught up with his mouth a second later. "Are Carter and Teal'c back?" he restated.
"I
don't know, sir... I don't think so," Rios blurted.
The
lead balloon popped into a flurry of shrapnel.
He
was moving again, not in a dream or a vision this time but for real, clattering
down the stairs into the control room, trying to compose himself, trying to
prepare himself for seeing the two remaining members of the team, his team,
dead, trying to make it all go away but knowing it never would unless he did
it himself, like he had almost done...
Through
drastically tunneled vision he saw
"Colonel?"
asked the person, and the blackness receded from the fringes of his eyes.
Carter.
And standing next to her, Teal'c.
And looking confused by Jack's breathless appearance,
Rios
was just an idiot. They were back. They were okay. Thank God.
- - -
Sitting
across the table from the Colonel, Sam did what she could to scrutinize him
without letting him - or anyone else for that matter - become aware that she
was giving him any more attention than usual.
For the most part that meant casual sweeping glances that encompassed
everyone, short millisecond peeks out of the corner of her eye, and being
extra mindful of him when he spoke.
There
didn't seem to be anything unusual going on; he didn't seem more preoccupied
then usual, he didn't snap at anyone, and outwardly he appeared to be in better
spirits now than he'd been during the pre-mission briefing. His observations about Dagin Lor were full of familiar wry wit, he painted a perfectly
accurate picture of P3F-787 itself, and he didn't purposely fill his speech
with comments he knew would go over Jonas' head.
Despite
this, or maybe because of it, Sam wasn't fooled.
She'd
been the first to notice him pounding down the stairs into the control room,
and although his face had been all but expressionless at the time his eyes
had been - of this she was nearly certain - filled with fear. Fear of what, from what, she had no idea... but it had dissipated shortly thereafter.
Dissipated. Not vanished entirely. It was still in there, somewhere, beneath the
professional report interspersed with offhanded jokes.
Janet
arrived midway through the briefing to give the latest on Dagin. "He's calmed down substantially since we
put him in isolation. I spoke to him
through the door, clarified who we were and that we didn't have anything to
do with the people who attacked his village.
I also explained to him the function of latex gloves," she added,
smiling vaguely and then sobering. "He
said... 'That's good, but it's probably not good enough. Wait until tomorrow'."
Sam
frowned. "Wait until tomorrow
for what? A medical
exam?"
The
doctor nodded. "Which I know is
something no one's exactly thrilled about," she said, turning her attention
to
Teal'c
added, his tone grave and his eyes suspicious, ""If
Dagin Lor has been exposed to the Goa'uld, then
he remains a potential threat. It is
very possible that the Goa'uld might have put him to use as a zay'tarc or as a delivery system for a weapon or mass destruction."
He was tactful enough not to mention Cassandra's ordeal in front of
Janet, and Sam suspected he didn't want to bring Ryac
into the conversation either.
"He
could be some kind of... Goa'uld operative," contributed Jonas, his voice
slightly questioning. "Technically
he could even be a Goa'uld himself, right?" he added, looking at Sam. She nodded and inwardly cringed; the knowledge
that she wasn't infallible as a 'Goa'uld detector' wasn't something that sat
well with her. After
- - -
By
lunchtime Jack had convinced himself that his seizure in the elevator had
simply been some kind of... episode. One
there would be no repeats of.
Obviously
it hadn't been a premonition, because Carter and Teal'c had made it home without
incident a good ten minutes before he'd gone looking for them. He was also becoming increasingly less convinced
that it had anything to do with post-traumatic stress, no matter how strange
the coincidences, because so far not a single related symptom had surfaced.
Besides... he wasn't the type. He
had lived through it, gotten over it, and now he was moving on.
It was much easier to believe that it was just some kind of panic attack,
maybe brought on by the heat on the planet or the slightly nauseating antiseptic
smell of the infirmary. Or maybe it
came from being around Dagin; perhaps mental illness was contagious after
all.
It
had just been so strange, so completely out of nowhere and with no physical
evidence that it had actually transpired.
Why couldn't it simply have been all in his mind?
To
prove his sanity, he'd actually sought out Rios - he'd been in the infirmary,
chatting with a nurse named Denise - gave the airman a hearty slap on the
back, and apologized for his temper earlier.
The last thing he needed was Rios complaining to his superior about
Colonel O'Neill going off on him; eventually it could make its way back to
Hammond, by that time having snowballed into a rumor of 'he cornered me in
the hallway and tried to kill me' proportions.
Then, just to prove what a fine and upstanding member of the military
community he was, he'd voluntarily submitted to a battery of horrific tests
and procedures from one of Fraiser's nurses, a man
who was twice the Doctor's size and half as intimidating.
For
almost an hour afterwards he sat alone in the commissary, taste-testing some
of the new desserts and trying to jot down some thoughts to use in his report
later, but his mind kept returning to the briefing.
If
Dagin had seen his people slaughtered and kidnapped by the Goa'uld, why hadn't
he even given Teal'c a second glance? They'd
come across communities before that hadn't set eye on an actual
And
that went back to one of the first questions posed, even before they'd set
foot on the planet. If the
A
"Colonel
O'Neill?"
Jack
looked up from his papers and found a redheaded Sergeant standing at the other
side of his table, her hands loosely clasped behind her back. "Yeah?"
"Doctor
Fraiser sent me to find you. She said
the patient in Isolation Room One has been asking for you."
Jack
lowered the notepaper. "Dagin?" He
couldn't think of anybody they might have in one of the holding pens, but
why in the world would the crazed little man actually be asking for him when
two hours ago, on the planet, he'd been screaming for Jack to stay away along
with everybody else.
"I
believe that's his name, yes sir."
Interesting. Maybe... he glanced at his notes...
maybe he would actually have a chance to ask some of these questions, if the
Muskrat was in a sharing mood.
He'd
just stepped into the hallway when it happened for the second time.
- - -
He
was running again.
Not
balls-out this time. Slowly,
stealthily, moving against an invisible wall.
Jack
stopped abruptly, watching as the Sergeant receded down the corridor without
looking to see if he was following. He
was glad.
Gingerly,
fighting the vertigo once again and half expecting the floor to drop out from
beneath him, Jack moved until he was clear of the door and leaning against
the wall. He could feel this wall clearly,
flat and cool against his back, but he could also feel some other wall brushing
against his shoulder as the other him jogged towards a destination unknown
and unseen. Jack In
The Here And Now tried to ignore the sensations, raising a page of
notepaper to his face as though he was reading it, casually loitering in the
hall and reading something, when in fact he was just using it to hide behind. While the elevator had been empty, this was
unfortunately a high traffic area, and someone was bound to notice if he gave
into the compulsion to freak out.
That
was assuming he had a choice in the matter.
Ignoring
wasn't working. He still felt the motions
of this other body as though they were his own, just as he had felt the first
time as though he were the one who'd been sprinting, who'd been shot, who'd
died...
But
he had died.
But
that wasn't why this was happening. It
wasn't.
Jack
felt his head move, as though he was looking around a corner or from side
to side, but of course his head
didn't move. He was still motionless,
and that seemed to be easing the disorientation somewhat. It was slightly easier, at least, to separate
what he was doing and what the other him was doing, and this time there wasn't
the added motion of the elevator. The
sensation itself, unfortunately, was plenty disconcerting on its own; he felt
like a marionette with strings attached at all strategically located positions, and someone was above him tugging on those strings,
and although he couldn't see himself
moving he knew that he was.
The
other him suddenly pulled his head back and retreated a few steps. He moved backwards, even though Jack's own back
was still firmly against the wall.
And
then it happened again. The pain, erupting.
Blossoming. There really was no good way to say it -- it
hurt like hell. This time, however,
it started in his chest and spread inwards, outwards, paralyzing... but not
so much that he didn't feel the other pains, the agony from the injuries that
killed him.
Killed him.
He
was dead, again.
And
it wasn't over. He'd barely recovered
enough to walk, had only just stumbled to the nearest supply cabinet and pulled
himself inside, when the sensations resumed.
Not exactly the same, but the same circumstances, the same premise,
the same pain. He was talking with
somebody, talking rapidly. He couldn't
hear what he was saying, or the other person's answered, but he could feel
his lips moving. He was... afraid. He was... planning something. But then there was the sense of commotion, and
something slammed into him, and then the pain swallowed him up like a tornado
might devour a helpless bird. And,
as though once this time hadn't been enough, he died.
Oh,
he was still breathing, maybe a little too fast. In the SGC, he was still standing. In this body, he was still alive. But in the other body he was dead, and a black
wave rushed over him like the tide pulling itself over an even blacker shore,
and the roar of the surf gave way to a deafening silence of the grave all
too quickly.
- - -
This
time, he woke up in a deserted corridor on Level 26.
Dagin
- and Fraiser - would have to wait.
- - -
On
the table in front of Sam was enough reading material to last her the rest
of her lifetime... and the basis for several more lifetimes of study, analysis,
examination. Not to mention the building
blocks for generations upon generations of practical use. The information that was still being garnered
about the Naquadria mineral was exciting, absorbing,
engrossing.
So
why had she just reread the same paragraph for the third time?
Sam
sighed and pushed the papers away, creating even more of a mess on her lab's work space. She
always liked to have a little project or some light reading like this waiting
in the wings; it was perfect for these inevitable downtimes. At the moment, she knew, Hammond and Fraiser
would be deciding exactly what to do with Dagin Lor,
and if SG-1 was to have any further role in the matter. If not, they'd soon be assigned another mission.
Otherwise, the schedule of events was completely unpredictable.
Speaking
of unpredictable...
"Major?"
"General!" Sam jumped-slid out of her chair, suddenly embarrassed
by the clutter she'd been so casually maintaining for the past half-hour.
Oh,
this was bad, she decided as General Hammond entered the lab. She thought it had been hard dealing with him
in the office, on his turf, but now it seemed somehow worse to have him come
looking for her, because in reality wherever he was on this base was his turf.
Her anxiety was childish, she knew; she wasn't in any way afraid of
"How
did it go today?" asked the General lightly, as though he were just making
conversation. He wasn't.
Sam
tensed. "Fine, sir," she
answered, attempting to sound as nonchalant as
The
only time
Not
now. Not so much. The day before he had seemed
a little hesitant, his emotions floating a little closer to the surface, as
though a little of his professional shine had been scuffed off. The fact that SG-1 had made it through their
first mission back without incident hadn't changed that, Sam guessed, or he
wouldn't even be here. Frowning slightly. Nodding almost instantaneously at her question. "Go ahead."
Sam
took a steadying breath, then began. "Sir, I hope you know... I know
you know that if I had any reservations about the Colonel's ability to lead
the team, if I saw anything that made me suspect
he wasn't fit for command, I would tell you.
Immediately."
"With
all due respect, sir..." She wavered.
"It feels that way a little right now.
To the Colonel, as well as myself."
That
bothered him. Sam could see the consternation
in his eyes, a dark flicker, before he pulled the mantle of his station up
around him and straightened, nodding once. She didn't know if he was agreeing with what
she had told him or merely acknowledging that she'd said her piece. "I'll talk to Colonel O'Neill about this
tomorrow," he said, as though Sam was supposed to know what 'this' was.
"I'd get it over with today, but Doctor Fraiser's
sent him home for the night."
Irrational
apprehension prickled at the back of her neck.
"Is he alright?"
"Apparently
the heat on the planet gave him a headache." He noticed her incredulity - the man had spent
how much of his career in burning hot deserts? - and
shrugged. "Not the most inspired
excuse, but you all passed your post-mission checkups and if he wants a little
time by himself... I'm inclined to look the other
way."
"Yes
sir," Sam answered softly, although she wasn't sure solitude could ever
be anyone's cure for the blues.
"Sir?"
"Go
home. Take the night off. Be back here by 1200 hours tomorrow."
He nodded at the piles of paper and stacks of binders.
"This'll still be here waiting for you."
Wondering
almost frantically if this was a case of 'what's good for the goose is good
for the gander' - or would it be the other way around? - Sam tried to protest
without really protesting. "Teal'c
and Jonas--"
"--Will
no doubt find some way to entertain themselves without
you."
There
was a subtle edge to the way he addressed her, and Sam knew protesting would
do no good. Meekly she nodded, straightening
up most of the mess on the counter while
And nearly colliding with Vasilii Nikolaev.
She
stepped back immediately, started by the sudden presence of the Russian commander.
It wasn't that she was intimidated by his broad face, barrel chest,
or dark, quick eyes - at least not much - but she hadn't heard any voices
or footsteps approaching the door of the lab.
To be sure, Nikolaev was alone, and he wasn't the type to chatter away
to himself, but he was also a very large, solid man
and it seemed improbable he could have been so quiet.
"Colonel,"
she greeted him, recovering after only a moment, but the common courtesy that
had worked so well with Captain Kozlov and Lieutenant
Voronin hadn't impressed Nikolaev previously, and
it didn't now. The commander of the
Russian team stood where he was for a minute, as though unwilling to give
her any ground, and for a strange moment Sam was certain that he was going
to block her passage.
Finally,
however, he gave a grudging nod and sat back on his heels. "Major," he responded roughly, not
giving her a chance to reply, stepping around her and continuing down the
hallway. His booted feet slapped heavily,
noisily, against the concrete floor.
Continuing
on her way, Sam shook her head, discomforted by the brief encounter. There was no doubt: out of the entire Russian
team, she liked Nikolaev the least.
General
Hammond had arranged an informal meeting between SG-1 and SG-19 before the
Russians had officially 'moved in', and Sam still winced at the memory. It had been terribly awkward for everyone except
for Jonas, and the fact that he'd been all smiles and handshakes had only
served to make things more awkward.
Apparently everything he'd read in Daniel's journals and the official
mission reports hadn't quite prepared him properly, and Colonel O'Neill -
who hadn't yet been cleared for duty at that point - had been decidedly chilly
towards the younger man for the next week.
The
three younger members of SG-19 - which Colonel O'Neill preferred to refer
to as 'SG-Nyet' - had at least responded to Jonas'
obliviously-offered friendship, and from there Sam and Teal'c had learned
to tread the thin line between being polite and upsetting their CO. But Colonel Nikolaev... he'd been standoffish
then, and that hadn't changed in the intervening weeks. She supposed if she didn't blame O'Neill for
his attitude she shouldn't be any harsher towards Nikolaev, but something
about him didn't sit right with her. She
had the nagging suspicion that he wasn't just unhappy to be at the SGC, but
that for some reason he actively disliked her.
That
didn't make any sense. She'd never
done anything to him. It was possible
it was just some damned sexist quirk of his... but that wasn't exactly something
she could comfortably ask the other Russians.
At least not now. And it wasn't worth bringing up to
By
the time she reached the locker room, she had put the incident out of her
mind.
- - -
Jack
got into his truck feeling, quite absurdly, like a hunted man. Like any minute now the MPs would be on him,
ordering him back down to NORAD's subbasement. He supposed he just had a guilty conscience;
after all, he had lied to Doc.
But
he had his reasons. He just couldn't
deal with all of this... down there. He
needed to clear his mind. Maybe the
seizures, the running and hiding that seemed constant throughout them, was
some kind of sign. He needed to run
and hide for a while.
- - -
Sam
had hoped that she would be able to get to the elevator and off the base without
running into another member of SG-19 and potentially repeating the awkward
moment with Nikoleav. Her wish was only half granted, for as she stepped
out of the locker room and into the hallway, she found herself face to face
with Yuri Kozlov. He stopped short when he saw her.
"Major."
"Captain."
Neither
of them moved. Sam was expecting the
same coldness she'd gotten from the Russian Colonel, but if anything Kozlov seemed nervous. As
though he was trying to say something. "Can I help you?" she asked finally.
The
man shook his head but still seemed conflicted, finally mumbling, "I...
I heard that Colonel O'Neill is not feeling well."
"He
had a headache," Sam replied promptly.
"Once you've been around here long enough, you'll probably experience
a few of your own."
He
actually seemed to realize that she was making a joke, even if it was a joke
rooted in truth. "I am... sure,"
he answered, his accent thick. For
a second it seemed like he might continue walking
past her, but again he faltered. "How
is... your father?"
Sam
blinked, surprised. "My
dad?"
"Ah,
yes. I have heard many things about
them," Kozlov was quick to explain, adding,
"Good things. He seems very interesting.
As do the Tok'ra."
"You're
lucky Colonel O'Neill isn't around to hear that," commented Sam, another
bit of humor seeped in reality. "I'm
sure he'll find a reason to come visit sooner or later," she said, thinking
that it might well be later, depending on how this whole Kanan thing resolved itself. "I'll make sure to introduce you two."
He
smiled briefly, finally regaining control of his legs. "That would be nice," he said over
his shoulder. "Good-bye, Major
Carter."
- - -
Jack
half-expected another seizure to hit him the entire drive home. He drove slower than usual, keeping to the right
as often as possible so he could pull over quickly if need be. His palms sometimes slipped on the wheel, his
mouth was as dry as his hands were moist, and he hated all of it. Hated feeling like this. Hated running away. Hated being afraid of something
that couldn't hurt him... not really.
He
made it home without incident, and told himself it was a sign. He was going to be fine, he just needed to relax.
Get a beer, watch some TV, and forget about work for a few hours.
It was, granted, an unlikely strategy for him; typically he solved
his problems by jumping, feet-first, into a new mission as soon as humanly
possible. It distracted him from his problems and got
his mind on track. Their little rescue
of Thor was a perfect example. A real,
attainable goal was exactly what he, Carter and Teal'c had needed to get out
of the funk they'd been in after Daniel's death... ascension... thing.
But
this was different. He couldn't explain
how; it just was.
He
did a little menial labor. Threw some
laundry in the wash, knowing full well he'd forget to put it in the dryer
and would have to wash it all over again.
Washed the dishes he'd dirtied the last time he'd been home. Dusted and reorganized the pictures and medals
on his mantle with a kind of reluctant pride. Finally, feeling accomplished, he sat down in
front of the television with a beer or three and zoned for a few hours.
The
night's programming varied between light and inane: a sports show with lots
of chubby guys and women in bikinis. The episode of The
Simpsons featuring The Who. A half hour of CSPAN-2, which Jack spent trying
to figure out if the old guy at the back of the aisle was Kinsey or not.
Finally he glanced outside, noticed that it was dark – and had been
for some time – and called for a pizza from his usual place.
With every passing hour, every nuance of normalcy, he felt a little
calmer, a little more rational, and a little more certain that a few hours
to himself was all he really needed to shake off this damn thing.
When
the doorbell rang twenty minutes later, around ten-o-clock, Jack didn't look
out the window to double-check that there was a delivery car parked on the
street. For a split second after opening
the door, he realized that that had been a very stupid thing to do, as a giant
- his face all in shadows - was standing on his porch like some sort of avenging
devil.
Then
the devil moved, the glow from the porch light fell over his features, and
Jack saw who it was. Vasilii
Nikolaev.
Somehow,
he didn't feel any better.
Standing
behind and to the left of Nikolaev was the fourth member of SG-Nyet, Lieutenant Natalia Tolinev.
Compared to her commanding officer, Tolinev always looked small and
strangely fragile, but despite that Jack found her to be the most... well,
if not the most admirable, at least the most agreeable.
He supposed he had a kind of grudging respect for that fact that, after
her near-death experience in that Babylonian pyramid thing - zigger-something
- she'd had the gumption to come back. He
also supposed the reason the Russians had put her on SG-19 was as a guilt
trip for him personally. After all,
the rest of Tolinev's team had died on that mission
- squished, crushed and blown up, respectively - and the Ruskies
had done what they could to place the blame for that on him. But she'd never acted like she had any kind
of grudge, and he'd... appreciated that, although he'd never admit it.
"Colonel,"
said Nikolaev gruffly, drawing Jack's attention away from the lieutenant. "If we could come inside, I'd like to have
a word with you."
Jack
felt his eyebrows reach towards his hairline.
The man hadn't said two voluntary words to him since coming to the
SGC, and now this? What was wrong with
these people that they couldn't figure out a simple I Ignore You, You Ignore
Me policy of cohabitation? "Hammond
send you?" he asked shortly, figuring that there was a one in a million
chance that Kozlov or Voronin
had made some complaint that had led to this.
But
Nikolaev shook his big, square head, squinting into the relative brightness
of Jack's home. Both he and the lieutenant,
Jack noted, were wearing black windbreakers that made them hard to see against
the deepening darkness. "He did
not."
"Hmm." Jack tightened his grip on the
door. "Then I guess I'll see you
tomorrow."
Now
Tolinev stepped forward. "Colonel,
please..."
Oh,
no. He wasn't falling for the 'please'
thing. Taking a step back, Jack told
them both firmly and with more than a little bite, "Listen, I have the
night off. I'm sure whatever it is
that's bothering you, it can wait until tomorrow."
"You'd
do well not to dismiss us so easily," said Nikolaev quickly, glowering.
Tolinev
closed her eyes, stepped back, opened them.
Jack
had the distinct feeling that there was something else going on here besides
a couple nosy 'neighbors'... and that the Russian colonel had just said something
he shouldn't have. Still holding his
front door half-closed and standing in the opening, effectively blocking their
passage and hopefully sending a truckload of body language to surpass any
possible English-Russian difficulties, he eyed them both carefully. "See ya tomorrow,"
he said slowly, and he began to shut the door.
Nikolaev
abruptly reached out and grabbed the door's edge. Jack felt his eyebrows raise another inch off
his face - what was the colonel going to do... break into his house? - but moved with determination, grabbing Nikolaev's wrist and forcibly removing it. The other man seemed a little shocked himself, either amazed by his own actions or by Jack's, and
let go easily.
"Tomorrow,"
Jack repeated, his voice sharp and nasty in his own ears, and he shut the
door quickly before Nikolaev could get any more bright ideas.
After
a second of thought, he threw the deadbolt.
When
the doorbell rang again, five minutes later, Jack remembered to double-check
the delivery car on the street.
He'd
just finished his fourth slice - and his third beer - when it happened again.
- - -
In
the stillness of the night, in the darkness of her house, Sam opened her eyes
and frowned.
She
wasn't sure what had woken her, but it had been something. The night was cool
but still, and the trees outside her open window
were motionless. It hadn't been the
phone, because she would have awoken before the end of the first ring. It could have been the sound of an object hitting
the floor somewhere in her house, but things didn't just fall over of their
own accord in the middle of the night.
There.
She
pushed herself up in bed.
There
it was again. The faint silvery sound of... keys.
Sleep
receding into wariness, her frown deepening, Sam threw the sheet back and
got out of bed, her bare feet almost silent against the carpet. A glance at her clock radio told her she hadn't
been asleep long; it was only a little after
Stupid
question, she amended. These days,
the only person with a set of keys to her house was Colonel O'Neill, just
as she had a copy of his. It seemed
more intimate that it really was; if Teal'c or Jonas had lived off-base she
was sure they would have swapped keys as well.
Since she and the Colonel were the only ones on the team with houses
these days, it just made sense. If something happened to one of them, or if there was some other kind
of unforeseen emergency...
But
if it was the Colonel, and there was some emergency... still, why hadn't he
called first? He had a cell phone,
he knew her number. And continuing
on that train of thought, why wasn't he pounding on her door or calling her
name as he fumbled with the keys, trying to get her up and at 'em as soon
as possible? Maybe she was crazy, perhaps she was paranoid,
but the jangling sounds she was hearing seemed somehow... stealthy.
Suspicious.
So
maybe it wasn't Colonel O'Neill at all. Maybe
someone had stolen his keys and somehow figured out what house the extra set
belonged to. Or could it be that someone
had gotten the keys through even more illegitimate means? How hard would it be for the NID to make a copy,
slip inside, grab her and run? No one
would suspect a kidnapping because there would be no sign of a break in.
She'd just be gone, with no one to vouch for her whereabouts after she'd left the
SGC, not even a witness in a parking lot this time...
Okay,
maybe she wasn't completely awake yet. Nevertheless...
The
small handgun was only a few feet away, tucked into one of her drawers. Sam pulled back a yellow sweater and grabbed
the weapon just as she heard her front door open, and she held her breath,
still waiting for a familiar voice to call out her name and the reason for
his visit.
Nothing. Just the soft,
sneaky sound of the door closing again.
Sam's
chest tightened, and she felt foolish but nevertheless
afraid. Ever since her kidnapping she'd
been nervous, more jumpy in places she'd previously felt completely safe. She had been suddenly made aware that, because
of the ties she had made and broken through the years, the SGC was not the
only place where her life was in danger, and maniacal beings from other planets
were not the only creatures who might want to see her dead. There were people out there - humans, from Earth
- with their own sick, twisted reasons for wanting to get at her, for wanting
to get their claws into her... and while the physical scars inflicted by Adrian
Conrad's gooneys had long since healed, the emotional ones still felt painfully
fresh. Especially
now, when her sanctity had been violated in the most wrenching, obvious way.
There
was an intruder in her house.
She
checked to make sure the safety was off.
Sam
could have called the police from the bedside phone, but they would never
get here in time to prevent the person in her house from taking whatever possessions
he wanted... or finding her. And considering
who she was, what she was, what she'd been through the past few years, she'd
be damned before she holed up in
her bedroom with the phone in one hand and her gun in the other, waiting for
him to come find her or take what
he wanted and leave. This was her
home and she had a right to defend it.
Angry, self-righteous, yet feeling terribly vulnerable in her tank top
and pajama pants, Sam eased the bedroom door open and slipped into the darkened
hallway. Hugging the wall, breathing shallowly, she slunk
closer to the entryway of the living room, trying to give her eyes time to
adjust to the darkness.
She
could hear heavy breathing in the next room - male breathing - although not
much movement. As though he was just
standing there, thinking, catching his breath. He'd never be more off-guard than this, Sam
decided, and she eased one hand around the corner of the wall, feeling for
the light switch she knew was there, encountering it, and flipping it up before
she could rethink her course of action.
The
main light in her living room seemed to ignite.
In reality it wasn't very intense - only about 60 watts - but in contrast
to the cool darkness it was dazzlingly bright and hopefully disorienting to
the prowler. "Stay where you are!"
she shouted, making no move to actually look around the corner.
"I'm armed!"
Again, no sounds of movement, just breathing. Sam had expected the intruder to make a mad
dash to the door, but if this was the NID they might have been trained to
hold their ground. But then, would
an NID agent here to spirit her away under the cover of darkness really be
standing in the middle of the room, huffing and puffing like he'd run a mile?
She
suddenly had a sickly certain feeling of who was in her house.
Slowly
she peered around the corner... and sighed.
Even from the back - for he was facing away from her, his head slightly
bowed - she could easily tell who her caller was. The single burning lamp was next to him, and
shadows painted opposite side of the room with larger versions of his form.
Relaxing,
although still feeling uneasy about her state of undress, Sam stepped into
the living room. Her mind raced - what
was he doing? Was he sick? Drunk? - she did her
damnedest to project a façade of calm. "Colonel?"
she queried, approaching him.
At
the sound of her voice he whirled, not so much in recognition as in anger,
like an enraged bull turning on an advancing toreador. His arm caught the table lamp and it toppled
onto the ground, the sturdy porcelain base surviving the trip but the glass
bulb shattering, bursting, and the room was plunged back into darkness now
pockmarked by sunspots in Sam's eyes. There
was still enough illumination from the windows, moonlight leaking in through
curtains and under blinds, for Sam to see that the hand that had knocked over
the lamp was not empty.
She
wasn't the only one who was armed.
Colonel
O'Neill aimed his gun at her and, like a computer program settling over her
brain, her training set in. For the
moment he wasn't Colonel O'Neill,
wasn't a friend, he was just a target with a weapon who wanted to harm her,
and without thinking she brought her gun up as well and steadied it with her
left hand. Then, because training didn't
amount to a hill of beans in a situation like this, her own mind kicked back
in, stuttering with shock.
He
didn't shoot her. In the dim light
she could see his eyes were wild and angry, his arm pointed towards her like
an arrow, his grip on the gun strong, his other arm dangling at his side,
but he didn't shoot her. Maybe because
she hadn't run, or maybe because she was fully prepared to shoot back. Only she wasn't, of course, but maybe he didn't
know that. Something was wrong, very
wrong, and while it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out, this
theoretical astrophysicist was at a loss to explain the how or why. What in God's name had possessed him to show
up here and stand there, pointing a gun at her?
Possessed...
Oh
Lord.
But
that couldn't be it. He couldn't be
a Goa'uld. There were so many reasons.
He'd been checked out by Janet after the mission; she'd seen it herself.
And even if Janet had missed something, Sam knew she would have sensed
it earlier... or she would be sensing it now.
And a Goa'uld wouldn't waste time with her anyway, he'd be doing whatever
he felt he had to do to gain power and security on this planet, or he'd be
trying to get off Earth to wherever
his allies were based. This wasn't
the action of a Goa'uld, it was the action of...
of a very disturbed man.
All
of this, from the time the light was extinguished until the moment the truth
dawned on Sam, in three seconds. Four,
tops.
Baal. This had something to do with
Baal, or Kanan.
He was having a flashback; he thought he was back in that fortress
and she was the enemy. "Sir, it's
me," she said hastily, in her firmest voice, trying to break through
whatever delusions might be surrounding him.
They
weren't very insulating delusions; he reacted immediately - and vehemently
- to the sound of her voice. "Shut
up!" he shouted, his voice strange and rough and unnatural, his eyes
glittering darkly in the diffused moonlight.
Obviously
he didn't want to hear this, didn't want her to reach him, but she had to,
she had to make him listen, make him see. She set her jaw and tried again. "Colonel--"
He
yelled over her, his raised arm shaking. "Shut
up, you bitch!"
Mentally,
Sam took a step back.
A
small stab of pain pierced her stomach, not a cold metal bullet but the next
best thing, almost as wounding, as shocking.
He'd never talked to her
like that... never talked to anyone like that, that she could remember. Not that his language was always clean, but
he was usually fairly inventive when it came to curses and insults. It shouldn't have hurt, not when something was
already so obviously wrong, but it did.
There
was no fear in his voice, only fury. His
breath came in rasping gasps, and with the back of his free hand he swiped
at his eyes.
He
was disoriented, not because of anything in the external environment but because
of something inside. If she shot him now, in the leg or the shoulder,
he probably wouldn't be able to return fire. He'd go down, be in a lot of pain, lose some
blood, but at least neither of them would die and they'd be able to get this
sorted out... somehow. If she waited,
if she let him end this stalemate, he might very well lose it completely and
blow her head off.
Sam
didn't want to get her head blown off. But
she also really didn't want to shoot him. What if she missed... nicked an artery? A thousand things could happen, could go awry,
and besides that there was just something fundamentally wrong about opening fire on Colonel O'Neill.
Even if it was in self-defense.
But
he wasn't himself, Sam thought sternly.
Yet
he was.
Indecision
and fear gnawed at her from both sides, and in her mind a clock ticked greedily
away at the seconds.
Finally,
he made the decision for her.
The
Colonel put his hand to his eyes again, only this time he moved differently:
slower, with less haste and less anger behind the motions. The gun hand slowly dropped, drifted away until
it was pointed at a bookshelf instead. His
other hand moved down from his face and he blinked, breathed, and it was
the Colonel this time, in body and mind.
It
was as though he was waking from a dream.
He
saw the weapon in his hand first, and frowned at it. Then he seemed to notice his unusual surroundings
and then, as his awareness expanded out like a bubble, he saw her. Still holding the gun on him,
just in case.
"Carter..."
he said slowly, warily, more of a warning than a question as to her identity,
and the honest confusion in his voice clenched it. She stood down at once, placing her gun on the
nearest flat surface and walking quickly to him, pulling his weapon easily
from his hand and putting it with hers, out of his reach.
He
didn't move to sit, simply stood where he'd been when she'd first seen him,
his expression bewildered and terribly vulnerable.
"It's okay, sir," said Sam, touching him awkwardly on the
arm, feeling ridiculous, knowing she couldn't possibly understand what he
was going through and knowing that, no matter what, it was certainly not okay for him. Maybe later, but not now. Perhaps
she wasn't encouraging him at all... perhaps the assurance was for herself.
The
Colonel looked up at her, his tanned skin paler than could be explained by
the dim lighting in the room. "Carter,"
he said again, more willfully this time, "how the hell did I get here?"
- Three -
"Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship.
Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile,
his friends are everything."
-
Willa Cather
Sitting
on the edge of an infirmary bed, alternately wallowing in self-pity and stewing
in self-recrimination, Jack decided that this was one of those moments where
being beamed up unexpectedly by Thor wouldn't have been such a bad thing. Unfortunately, last he knew, Thor was without
a body, so shanghaiing unsuspecting Earthlings was pretty much out of the
question. Jack probably had a better
chance of the ground opening up beneath him, swallowing him, and letting out
a fiery, molten-magma belch.
General
Hammond was standing in front of him, Doc Fraiser kept darting to and fro
- poking and stabbing at his body, spiriting away his bodily fluids to parts
unknown, prodding into orifices better left undisturbed - and Carter was almost
always in sight. Jack wasn't sure who
of the three he most wished to avoid: the commanding officer he had, by omission,
lied to, the pint-sized medical terrorist, or the person he had... almost...
could have...
Then
the exam was complete, Teal'c and Jonas Quinn arrived with their faces full
of confusion and concern, and the Inquisition began.
Jack,
feeling more contrite than he had in some time, of course told them everything.
He could have asked to speak to
But
nothing came to mind.
When
he'd used every relevant adjective - some of them twice - he gave what he
hoped was a pathetic shrug and faced the General.
"I know I should have told someone about this the first time,
sir, I--"
"We'll
discuss that later," interrupted
Fraiser
looked at the General thoughtfully, and Jack could almost see the thoughts
firing away behind those slightly preoccupied eyes of hers. "I'd prefer to examine the Colonel's blood
work before I rush to judgement, sir," she said, abnormally edgy.
Typically she had no problem firing off theory upon supposition, presenting
possibilities if only to stimulate her mind and those around her.
Now, however, she was decidedly reluctant, and Jack - piqued but mostly
resigned to the idea - thought he knew why.
"Do
you really think you're going to
find some physical cause for this?"
"Anything's
possible," she said diplomatically. "Right
now I think it's best to keep an open mind," she added, the words slightly
more pointed and intended all for him.
The
General was off without another word - although he spared a second for a mean
'I'll be back' look that would put Arnold Schwarzenegger
to shame - and, at a nod from Jack, Teal'c followed. Jonas, who had a tendency to become Teal'c's shadow when things got tense, hesitated, looked from
one group to the other, waited for some kind of direction, got none, and evidently
decided whatever possible danger or disaster could be in the Gate room was
a safer environment than the infirmary.
So
now it was just the medical terrorist... and Carter. The former excused herself
and moved into the next room, probably to make sure she was prepared in case
this current bout of Gate travel - like so many before - ended in medical
emergency. The latter - still wearing
the black jeans and white shirt she had hastily thrown on - perched on the
bed next to Jack's, looking uncomfortable.
Wondering
when he'd go off next?
"I'll,
um, replace the lamp," he said awkwardly, wanting to apologize but not
knowing how, watching out of the corner of his eye as she turned her attention
to him.
Her
reply was soft and somewhat halting. "You...
it didn't break."
"Oh. Good."
He sat a little further forward on the bed, balancing a little more
precariously. Rubbed
his hands slowly together. Swallowed. "I...
uh..."
She
saw her shift on the bed, probably looking for Frasier. "Sir?"
Jack
knew that this shouldn't be so hard. Just
like admitting his wrong-doing to
But
Carter... he could have killed her. He
wouldn't have done it on purpose, he wouldn't even have remembered it, but
he could have done it. He could probably
still do it. And that... that went
so far past a simple apology that just saying the words seemed like that much
more of an affront.
They
slipped out anyway, stinging like lemon juice in the protracted silence that
followed. "I, um... I'm sorry."
He
could still hear Fraiser moving around in the other room, talking to one of
the nurses.
Carter
was quiet for so long that he began having suspicions she was going to snub
him outright... but then, just as he was starting to really worry, she answered
in that same quiet tone: "You don't have anything to apologize for."
He
still didn't look at her, afraid that her expression would be as unconvincing
as her tone. "Really? You get a lot of guys
breaking and entering and pointing guns at you?"
She
sighed. "You didn't break in. And what happened... it wasn't you, sir."
"Really,"
he repeated.
"Really,"
she insisted.
Jack
rubbed his hands together again, staring down at them, trying to understand
how they could have been doing things without him around to direct them. "If I had any idea..." he started,
then stopped, shook his head, and tried again.
"I didn't have any idea that I was going to get... violent. The other two times... well, no one ever said
anything, so I figured I was just... running around like the proverbial headless
chicken."
"I
know, sir."
"If
I had any idea, I would have said something to Fraiser."
"I
know you would have, sir."
"I
don't remember getting my gun. I don't
remember deciding to go to your house. I
don't remember going there."
Yet he had; he couldn't recall any of it, but the fact that his truck
had been parked in front of her house had been a pretty good indication.
He'd gotten his gun out of its drawer, he'd
grabbed his keys, climbed behind the wheel and driven to Carter's house. He'd let himself in, and when she had come to
investigate the noise he'd pulled the gun on her. None of which he could remember, all of which
had happened.
The
facts of it hadn't completely sunk in, in part because he was in a way so
disconnected from them and in part because it was something close to a living
nightmare. Jack couldn't imagine many
things more horrible than being deemed a threat to his friends. God, as far as adult human companionship went,
Carter and Teal'c were all he had anymore... and with Teal'c, it wasn't even
really human. Jonas was a decent guy,
but he wasn't really a friend; not now, maybe not ever. He liked
"I know you'd never intentionally hurt me, sir," Carter responded in the same flat tone, and finally he turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were surprisingly shadowed, but she did seem genuine.
"If
I hadn't snapped out of it--"
"You
weren't yourself."
"You
should have shot me."
The side of Carter's mouth suddenly quirked, as though she was trying
not to smile. "Probably," she allowed,
drawing the serious shade back down, but Jack was still left with the impression
that he had somehow amused her. Well...
fine. Whatever worked.
"You
know," he said in a mock conversational tone, leaning back now. "Fraiser doesn't really think she's going to come up with anything from those tests."
Carter's
expression was sympathetic, yet knowing. No
matter how Fraiser had evaded the question, the answer had still been obvious
to her, to Jack, and probably Hammond. "What
do you think, sir?"
He
raised his eyebrows. "You mean,
do I think I'm nuts?"
"Not
nuts," she corrected him, frowning an exasperated frown. "But don't you think it's at least a little
possible that this is related to your..."
"Ah!"
he stopped her sharply. "Whatever
you do, don't say 'ordeal'. And no. I don't think
it's possible. I am not doing this
to myself." He ticked the familiar
symptoms off on his fingers. "I've
been sleeping fine, no nightmares, no insomnia, no flashbacks..."
"But
you're still afraid Doctor Fraiser isn't going to find anything in her tests,"
observed Carter.
Jack
paused mid-finger. Did that what it
came down to? Being afraid? In all honesty he knew he blood work was going
to come back clean, certainly knew he wasn't carrying a snake around in his
cranium, and he'd dismissed another handful of possibilities; all the usual
suspects.
He
knew - and he'd known since the second he'd been grasped by that third seizure
- that there was something else in play here, some other contributing factor,
and now he realized how eager he was to jump on that possibility. Bizarrely odd, in fact. He was, in his mind, choosing between two hypotheses,
trying to determine which one felt right. In one corner, he had
a well-known, well-documented, and curable - if traumatic - condition: post-traumatic
stress disorder, brought on by his sickness-snaking-capture-torture. In the other corner... a virtually
limitless list of Maybes and What Ifs, spanning everything from alien possession
to inoperable brain tumor.
And,
for some reason, he was impossibly enthusiastic about the second option in
any of its myriad forms. That right
there had to be a sure sign of mental illness.
Or maybe it was just him, his MO: prepared to dash headlong into the
unknown instead of facing up to the known.
If
- when - the tests came back clean, Fraiser would find the nerve to say it:
PTSD. They'd take him off the team
and send him to a shrink; if not MacKenzie, then
one of his ilk. They'd
want him to talk about his 'ordeal',
about the seizures, about his childhood, his failed marriage. They'd want him to write down his feelings,
look at inkblots, and take the pills they subscribed for him. He'd be cut off from his lifeline, set adrift,
and they'd be made to go on without him.
At
first he thought that the mere notion was triggering an honest to God panic
attack, but then the familiar dizziness hit him. He groaned, both in dismay and in preparation
of the pain he knew was coming. Slowly
he eased himself back on the thin mattress, trying to focus on the press of
it against his back and the all-too familiar ceiling above, but the feelings
of the other body just wouldn't be denied.
They came.
Dimly
he heard a metallic creak, the slap of shoes against the floor, and Carter's
voice. "Janet! It's happening again!"
- - -
"I'm
sorry, guys. I don't know what else
to tell you."
Jonas
glanced at Teal'c, but Teal'c's gaze remained steadily
focused on Sam. The two of them had
cornered her in the commissary when she'd come for coffee; apparently Janet
had turned them away more then once during the past half-hour, they were starved
for news of the Colonel and determined to pump it out of her.
Unfortunately,
after she'd convinced them both to sit with her at
a corner table, her meager knowledge had been drained away in mere minutes. "After you left with
He'd
started shaking, gasping as he tried to speak to her and Janet, to depict
what was happening in his mind. For
lack of a better explanation, she'd told Teal'c and Jonas, it had been as
though he'd been inhabiting two bodies at the same time. One, his actual physical body, had been laying on the infirmary bed.
The other, the one they couldn't see, the
one in his mind... well, he'd said he'd been running again. Someone was chasing him, he'd sworn through
chattering teeth. And then the Colonel
had stiffened, sucked in a deep breath, and jerked
as though Janet had had him hooked up to the defibrillator. He'd mumbled, "Oh God," and Sam had
felt her heart being yanked loose from its moorings, and he'd whispered, "He's
got a knife, he... my neck... oh God, he just slit my throat, there's blood,
I can't see it but I can feel it, it's going down my front, it's in my mouth"
his voice high and hoarse as though his vocal cords had actually been brutally
severed. At some point in that she'd grabbed his hand, and he'd squeezed back
- tightly, but the pain didn't register - and somehow... he rode it out.
Became quiet.
Closed his eyes.
For a second, he'd been too quiet, too
still, but just as Janet had reached out for her stethoscope he'd opened his
eyes.
"Died
again," he had said, sounding exhausted.
She'd
sat with him for a while longer, and then Janet had sent her for coffee. Upon reflection Sam doubted she'd be able to
get back into the infirmary with any ease, so she took the moment to explain
to Teal'c and Jonas - in brief - what had happened... and to massage her sore
right hand. "The only unusual
thing," she continued, "was that he didn't have any missing time
this time around. He came right out
of the hallucination. He says the three
previous times he's blacked out afterwards and woke up in a completely different
place. I'm having
Jonas
appeared equal parts enthralled and sickened; he kept glancing at the food
on the other side of the room and on other people's plates and swallowing
thickly, as though nauseated. "And
Doctor Fraiser still thinks that this is just stress?"
"No
just stress," Sam insisted, but she wasn't sure how to continue. "When... when the body - including the
brain - is put through something traumatic, there are bound to be consequences.
How they manifest themselves... well, this isn't normal,
but what the Colonel went through wasn't a textbook case either."
Teal'c
seemed inclined to disagree. "O'Neill
has suffered before," he stubbornly remarked. "This has never happened to him on any
previous occasion."
Sam
pursed her lips. "No, but on previous
occasions, he hadn't been tortured to death. Repeatedly." Not to mention everything that had led up to
that abuse, she thought morosely. The
Colonel had been put through a lot lately; she wasn't even sure why she was
surprised that something like this was happening.
Grimacing,
Jonas shook his head. "But you're
all assuming that this has something to do with... you know. Kanan. Baal. What if that's not the case?"
"It's
the most likely cause," Sam sighed, aware that they all wanted to look
for answers elsewhere, all wanted a simple problem
with a quick fix. Unfortunately no
such thing existed here, acting as though it did would only encourage the
Colonel to do the same, and that could only hinder his recovery. And there would be a recovery. There had to be, damn it.
Tapping
his fingers on the tabletop, Jonas still seemed unsettled with the explanation.
"Do you mind if I explore any... unlikely causes?" he asked
edgily.
Sam
smiled, aware of how half-hearted the expression must look and even more aware
of how tired she felt. She needed that coffee.
She'd gotten a few hours of sleep, but not nearly enough, certainly
not enough to muster the energy to talk Jonas down. "Explore away,"
she told him, nodding to Teal'c as well. "I
need to get back to the infirmary."
As
she stood to leave, so did they. "Keep us informed, Major Carter,"
said Teal'c, and it wasn't a request.
She
poured two mugs of coffee and returned to the infirmary, but as expected the
guard at the door refused to let her pass.
"I'm sorry, Major," he said, either
genuinely apologetic or worried that she'd give him a scalding java shower
in retribution. "Doctor Fraiser
said you should come back in about an hour."
Knowing
that no amount of scolding, pleading or pulling rank could change the mind
of an enlisted man who'd had the fear of Fraiser put into him, Sam gave in
quickly. She consumed both cups of
coffee in short order, and then checked in with
Janet
was standing at the far side of the room, writing on a clipboard, and she
looked us as they entered. Glancing
around, Sam couldn't see the Colonel on any of the beds, and Janet noticed
her confusion immediately. "I
moved him to Isolation Room Two."
Janet's
tone was soft, the kind of voice she typically reserved for imparting bad
news. The back of Sam's neck prickled,
turning cool with dread. "It happened
again, didn't it?"
Acknowledging
"Smaller?"
queried Hammond, and Sam noticed the General's hands
fisted tightly at his sides.
Janet
shrugged. "I'm not sure, sir. He wasn't exactly coherent at the time."
"Did
he become violent?"
"No..."
said Janet slowly. "Although he did
try to walk out of here after the hallucination appeared to have stopped. Didn't hurt anybody, didn't even touch anyone.
Airman Hamilton blocked the doorway, and the Colonel just... stood
there for about half a minute, and then he seemed to wake on his own.
However..."
"However?" Sam prodded, unwilling to wait for the General to do the same.
Janet
regarded her warily. "To put it
mildly, he was more concerned with base security then his own health. I think he might have concerns that, in his fugue state, he was coming to find
you.
He was fairly agitated. Agreeing
to put him in isolation was the only way I could calm him down."
The
cold, prickling feeling intensified until it felt like a dozen stilettos of
steel-hard ice digging into her flesh.
"There's
a camera in the room, of course, so I can monitor him from here," Janet
continued. "There's also a guard
outside, and I have a team on standby in case... well, in case anything unexpected
happens."
Janet
reached for the clipboard again, but didn't look at it, merely holding it
close to her chest as though she were a child groping for her security blanket. The image didn't fit perfectly - Janet Fraiser
was hardly insecure - but the motion had enough of the earmarks of a nervous
twitch to make Sam anxious. "Not
worse, exactly, but they seem to be more frequent. And..."
She sighed, gripping the clipboard tighter, "the Colonel's preliminary
blood work is back. Nothing's jumping
out as an anomaly. I also was able
to monitor him during the last attack. His heart rate and blood pressure jumped, as
you'd expect, but nothing else seemed to be wrong."
"Something's
wrong, Doctor,"
Janet
deflated but nodded her agreement. "Yes, sir. I'm
just not sure it's something I can fix."
A
nurse in another part of the infirmary called Janet's name, and the doctor
excused herself. Sam was left looking
at General Hammond, seeing the concern in his eyes and knowing it was present
tenfold in her own. The painful prickling
had metamorphosed into a neck ache and a queasy stomach. "Sir, permission to check in on the Colonel,"
she said quietly.
He
didn't seem at all surprised by the request.
"Doctor Fraiser and her staff are perfectly competent, Major," he replied, which seemed to be an unnecessarily
cryptic response.
"I
know they are, sir," Sam responded, and the sentiment was heartfelt. "I just think it's important..."
Important to let him know she didn't fear him.
Important to let him know that she didn't consider him a danger to
her safety and never would. God, he'd
demanded that Janet close himself up in there, all alone, away from immediate
medical care and the people who cared about
him, because he'd been afraid of what he might do to her, to any of them. She knew that wasn't her fault, wasn't even
under her control, but nevertheless she felt the weight of blame on her shoulders.
"Important to make sure he knows we're not giving up on him,"
she finished.
Now
"Sometimes
I wonder, sir," she retorted, and then rushed on. "You said you wanted me to keep an eye
on the Colonel. To
look after him. I'm just asking
for permission to do that, General."
- - -
At
first, Jack thought he was dreaming.
A
dream would have been a pleasant change, and it wasn't completely wishful
thinking; the last two seizures, the first hitting only an hour ago and the
second coming so quickly on its heels, had worn him out. As soon as he'd been securely locked in the
isolation room, he'd fallen on the bed and thought
he remembered dozing off... after doing some serious thinking.
The
first time in the infirmary, with Carter there, had simultaneously been the
worst and the least bad of all the seizures.
The actual hallucination - as Fraiser was calling them - had actually
been pretty horrible. The first two
attacks had been bad enough: the pain, the dying,
the fear bleeding at the corners. But
in both those instances, at least it had been over relatively quickly. A few quick stabs of agony and then merciful
- albeit smothering, suffocating - darkness had engulfed him. The third seizure he barely remembered.
This
time, however, the pain and the terror had both been protracted, and the death...
well, he didn't think he'd ever forget the feel of cool steel slicing savagely
through his neck, the hot gush of blood as it poured down his shirt, over
his pinned arms and hands, down his throat and into his stomach and lungs,
the energy leaving him at the same swift rate.
And it had been all the more terrifying because not only could be not
stop what was happening, he couldn't even
see it, or hear, smell or taste,
only feel.
But... Carter had been there. And as
awkward and uncomfortable as it had been to have her see him like that, raving
like a maniac about things she couldn't see, her presence had also been a
surprisingly steadying force. She'd
anchored him more firmly to this reality, this body, than he'd been during
any previous attack, and he'd recovered from it much more quickly. And
he hadn't tried to run off in a blind panic.
All of that had appeared to bode well... even if he was a little embarrassed
that simply holding Carter's hand had had such a profound effect on him.
For a while, a few minutes at least, he had dared to hope.
And
then, not twenty minutes later, it had happened again. And it had been different, again. He'd been hiding, and there had been someone
else there; Jack had the vague impression that he'd been trying to protect
that person, or they him. But they
- the bad guys, the ones who were hopscotching through these attacks of his,
killing him repeatedly in his mind - had nevertheless found him. Pain had shot through his body like a spider
web of acid, pain had pinned him to the ground like a metal lance, death had
consumed, throwing a heavy, dark shroud over his face... and then he had woken
up, standing near the infirmary door. The
entire staff had been staring at him, and a nervous young MP had been staring
at him nervously from the threshold.
He
didn't know why he'd been trying to leave the infirmary... yet he did. The sick truth seemed inevitable given the events
of earlier that night: lost in what Fraiser had referred to as a 'fugue state',
his subconscious mind commanding his motor functions from some secret room
in his head, he'd been going after Carter again.
It
seemed clear now, or as clear as anything could be at this moment. Every time he blacked out following a seizure,
finding Carter had been on the top of his subconscious' list of priorities.
The first time he had gone to the briefing room, where she should have
been, where she would have been only minutes later. Waking after the second seizure, he might well
have been on his way to Carter's lab. The
third time brooked no question, absolutely none. And as far as he was concerned, it was only
a miracle or a quirk of fate that had prevented him from slipping into the
fugue-thing again the fourth time, when Carter had been right there, within striking distance.
Jack
had come to understand this shortly after the fifth fugue, and he hadn't given
Fraiser another moment's peace until she had agreed to put him somewhere where
he couldn't hurt anybody. And as soon
as that worry had been off his mind, he'd found it surprisingly easy to sleep.
To dream...
Or not. At he was sure it was a dream
because of how vivid it was, how intense the sensations were. However, they weren't the intense, vivid sensations
he was becoming increasingly familiar with: there was no sense of motion,
no feeling of fear, of being prey stalked by predator. But he was most certainly sitting,
a cool glass in his hands, resting on his lap, the almost indistinguishable
impression that he was speaking. Speaking slowly, calmly.
The
dream-him leaned forward and set the glass down on a hard, flat surface, and
for a while there was no disorientation at all.
The other him was just... sitting there, occasionally
speaking. Nevertheless, Jack was tense.
He'd come completely out of his half-asleep state now, and he'd had
the first epiphany:
This wasn't a dream, this was another seizure.
So
no matter how quiet, how calm it was now, it was going to get bad. The other him was speaking to someone else,
and it was only a matter of time before that person attacked. Struck out with lethal force.
Jack clenched his hands into fists, focusing on the dull pain of his
fingernails digging into his palm in an effort to minimize the agony he knew
would follow.
Then,
there it was -- a touch. But a soft
touch. He'd slipped both of his hands
into someone else's, and for a moment there was nothing but the feel of a
soft surface underneath him and that innocent flesh-on-flesh contact.
Any
moment now, he knew, the blow would come, the pain would begin, and the darkness
would follow.
And
then someone - presumably that same someone - kissed him. And he kissed back.
The
other Jack - unseen, unheard - responded, while in reality, prone on a thin
military-issue mattress, the real one sucked in a sharp breath. It was exceedingly disturbing - maybe even more
so than the violence he was becoming accustomed to - to feel yourself kissing
someone when there was no one standing in front of you, no one by your side,
no one within sight. Violence, after all, was so often impersonal,
even when carried out face to face: your enemy was your enemy, and thinking
of him or her as a human being with hopes and dreams and loved ones only weakened
you. But displays of affection, of
love, could only be faked by a deranged mind.
The
kiss he was experiencing was not passionate at first, but within moments it
had escalated: softening, deepening, and gaining momentum. Jack could almost feel the hormones rushing
through him, the heady combination of tenderness and arousal, but he was too
tense to fully appreciate any of it. Soon enough, he knew, pain would replace
pleasure. Five out of five demented
hallucinations agreed.
But
it never happened.
The
two bodies - his and the other - grew closer, and his suspicion started to
wane. Maybe this... derivation from
the norm was exactly what he needed to renounce his hold on sanity. Maybe it was a sign he had completely lost it.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was a sign of something else.
Now
the kiss grew harder, and Jack felt two thrills of anticipation in two different
bodies simultaneously. Hands were no
longer holding hands. Hands were reaching
out, caressing, holding, squeezing, exploring. And somewhere within that very thorough exploration,
the second epiphany hit. And if anything
could have jolted him completely free of the seizure by sheer shock alone,
it would have been this. It didn't,
but it might have, because it was something he had never even considered.
He'd
explained it to Carter and Doc by saying it was as though he was
inhabiting two bodies at the same time, and suddenly, with a little
exploration, he realized that...
He
was inhabiting a woman's
body.
The
sudden awareness was almost the physical blow that he'd been waiting for,
abnormal and erotic and embarrassing and enlightening all at once. Now he understood the comment he'd made to Doc
- shortly before slipping into the fugue - about being smaller. This form was lighter, more slender, and more
graceful then what he had... grown up in and into.
But
it hadn't been that way the entire time, he was sure of it. The first two hallucinations, at least, he had
been a man -- and Jesus, that sounded weird. He would have noticed earlier if he had been
a woman all this time -- and hell, that
sounded even weirder.
However,
it was the cause of the third epiphany.
An
epiphany he was able to ignore for the time being. The frankly astonishing revelation had shocked
him right out of his paranoid anticipation of pain and suffering and inevitable
death, and now he found that he was able to enjoy the 'hallucination'. Maybe it was perverse, maybe it was voyeuristic,
maybe he was one step away from being a bona fide
dirty old man. But it was about damned
time this condition gave him something that wasn't disturbing and agonizing,
and if this was it... well, he'd take it. If this was the only time in the foreseeable
future that he would be able to feel wanted and needed in that way, well, then he'd take that too.
He always had.
Unfortunately,
like a PG-13-rated movie, it all faded away before things could get really interesting. The old kiss-and-cigarette, only he wouldn't
even get to experience the cigarette part.
The impressions, physical and mental, lingered in his mind even after
the sensations had left him.
Jack
opened his eyes, looked around the empty room, and closed them again. No visions of death. No black tide, no dark cloth, no demons grinning
wickedly from the corners of his mind. Just
a vague something - a warmth, a light, and then... the unmistakable feeling
that time had passed.
He
opened his eyes again. The ceiling
looked no different, but then again why would it? Nevertheless he knew that time had passed, that
he had drifted into another fugue, but this time he hadn't moved from where
he'd lain. Maybe, he reasoned, his
subconscious was starting to understand that it couldn't win, couldn't get
out, couldn't hurt Carter, and should just give up.
Well,
that was wishful thinking.
"Sir?"
Strangely,
Jack wasn't startled by the sound of her voice.
He'd known that she wouldn't be able to stay away, and part of him
was glad she hadn't. The other part
was just... scared for her. Very scared.
- - -
When
Sam had first entered the room, the Colonel had been asleep, prone on the
narrow bed, still dressed and booted. For
one short moment she had envied him... and then that small bit of jealousy
berated itself and became relief. He'd
been able to get some rest, and rest was invaluable.
She'd
taken a seat in the room's single chair, leaving the small desk lamp on because
it was the only illumination in the room and hadn't seemed to have bothered
Colonel O'Neill thus far. For a while
she sat and watched him do nothing but sleep, and that led to her observing him sleep, which was very different.
This
was, she realized, the same room she'd been put in when she'd been suspected
of being a zay'tarc, and didn't that just bring
the happy memories flooding back. But
was this really so different?
The
hallucinations were a problem in themselves: they were obviously deeply disturbing,
very frightening, and incapacitating. But the fugues that followed seemed to be another
mystery altogether. Was it just his
brain trying to reset itself after the violence and irrationality of the seizure,
or was there something else at work here?
Like a sleepwalker trying to sort out his subconscious problems while
the unconscious mind was suppressed?
That
had disturbing implications.
It
meant that deep down, the Colonel still connected her, associated her with
the double-whammy of implantation and torture.
It meant that he must have a great deal of anger towards her, anger
he wasn't admitting to or accepting but that was still there, roiling under
the surface, taking control when his waking mind shut down. It meant... he blamed her. Hated her.
Sam shook her head. That just didn't
make sense. She hadn't forced him to accept the Tok'ra's offer. She
hadn't gone ahead and okayed it without consulting
him first. She'd asked him, hard as
it had been; she'd presented him with the option and allowed him to decide
for himself. Of course, she'd wanted him to accept very badly,
and maybe that had showed, maybe that had influenced him at that penultimate
moment of weakness and he regretted it now... but regret was a far cry from
rage that manifested itself in a desire to kill her.
The
Colonel's eyes opened.
He
stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, not seeming to realize that he
wasn't alone, but when she announced her presence with a hesitant "Sir?", he turned his head to look at her as though he'd been
aware of the company all along.
"You
shouldn't be here," he said hoarsely.
Sam
didn't answer, and the Colonel pushed himself into a sitting position. "Did you hear me?" he asked, and there
was a thin line of fear beneath the tone of command.
"Yes
sir," she responded calmly, trying in every way - tone of voice, body
language, and spoken words - to let him know she wasn't afraid. That was what he needed, she was sure: confidence,
trust, someone believing in him. "But
there's a camera in this room -" she nodded at the corner in which it
was mounted "-and a guard outside. And it doesn't matter. You're not going to try to hurt me."
This
time the silence was the Colonel's. He
pulled his knees up and leaned against the pillows, looking ahead unhappily.
Sam
leaned forward almost unconsciously, trying to read his expression. "It happened again, didn't it?"
He
sighed and glanced at her without moving his head. "Just came out of it," he said morosely.
So
he hadn't exactly been sleeping, Sam thought, but he also hadn't been trying
to hunt her down. "That bad?"
she asked, because judging by his intensively solemn demeanor it must have
been extremely painful, extremely distressing.
The
Colonel merely shrugged, neither confirming nor denying, and Sam was struck
by the strange feeling that this was the kind of non-conversation he would
have been having with Daniel right now, if Daniel had been here. She wished he was here. Then she could have been off with Teal'c and
Davis, going over the tapes from the previous day, brainstorming with Janet
on possible causes and cures, safe in the knowledge that Daniel wouldn't allow
the Colonel to spiral too far into depression.
It
wasn't that she disliked spending
time with Colonel O'Neill, even in this kind of situation; after all, she had been the one to ask
No, it wasn't that she disliked being here. But she wished that she didn't have to be the bearer of bad news on top of everything else. "Doctor Fraiser's still working on it," she said, trying to spin what she'd been told into a more positive light. "She's been able to rule some things out from looking at blood work and tests, and the sooner we know what this is, the sooner we can--"
"Carter,"
he interrupted, finally turning to face her, swinging his legs over the side
of the bed in an explosion of restless energy.
"If you're not going to leave, will you at least be
quiet and listen for a minute?"
She
nearly smiled, glad to see the spark return to his eyes and voice. "Of course, sir."
He
tried to look annoyed but was obviously too preoccupied with other things
to keep up the act for long. He stalled,
sighed, looked up at her hesitantly, and she wondered if he was thinking the
same thing, about who would have been sitting in her chair if this had happened
six months ago.
Finally,
he began. "This last time... the
body I was in... it was a woman."
Sam's
brow furrowed slightly. "A woman?"
The
Colonel scratched at his forehead absently and sighed again. "Yeah... it's hard to explain, it just,
um... felt different."
"I
suppose I can understand that," said Sam, not really understanding at
all. But... hadn't he mentioned something
to Janet the last time about feeling smaller? Smaller in stature, maybe? "You're saying these hallucinations--"
"I'm
saying they're not hallucinations," he corrected her. "Whatever's going on here... I thought they might
be memories. Past missions, bad stuff
that happened before the SGC, and I was... making up the death part."
He shrugged, obviously not thrilled with the explanation.
"But this..." - he began to speak with his hands - "this
was different. And I think for the
last couple of times, I've been experiencing these things in some woman's
body." Sam shifted in her seat,
breaking eye contact. What, exactly,
was she supposed to say to that? Thankfully, however, he seemed willing to continue
on his own. "And as far as Frasier's
tests are concerned... I don't care what she did or didn't find.
These 'hallucinations' of mine... I don't know how
or why, but they're coming from
somewhere else. Not me."
Sam
almost told him about Jonas Quinn's skepticism but held back, aware that he
might find Jonas a less than flattering ally.
"What about the fugues?" she asked instead, ready - if not
completely eager - to hear this theory on those, hoping it would blow her
own out of the water.
But
the Colonel's face crumpled somewhat, and this time he was the one to look
away. "I dunno,"
he mumbled. "And until we figure
it out... I don't want you trying to spring me.
I want to be here."
"Fine,"
was the easy reply, threaded with defiance. "But if you recall, sir, General Hammond
specifically asked me to keep an eye on you, and I intend to follow his orders
to the fullest."
It
seemed the Colonel would have liked to get angry, at least a little irate,
but it was equally obvious that he just didn't have the energy right now. "You know... I'm doing this for your own
good."
Six
years ago, the idea that he thought he had to protect her from anything -
up to and including himself - would have made her bristle. It wouldn't have mattered if it was the truth
or not; all she would have seen was him not trusting her to be capable, to
take care of herself. She would have
ragged and huffed and blown him off in the least-unprofessional manner possible.
But
that was six years ago, and she had mellowed, and she thought she had gotten
to know Colonel Jack O'Neill very well. He
was by and large a man of action; he liked to be doing things, doing something, keeping busy even if it was
only to expel nervous energy. Maybe
there was another side of him, a side that liked sitting on the dock all day
flanked by a cooler of beer and a tackle box, but she'd yet to see that for
herself. She knew he liked taking part
in finding solutions to things, if not by being an active participant in the
brainstorming process, than by acting as a sounding board. Sam didn't know how many times - flitting between
her lab and Daniel's and the infirmary, wherever the calamity was focused
- his off the cuff remarks had been a godsend. Even if he couldn't come up with the solution
himself, he never just sat back and waited for it to be found.
Concurrently
she knew that, probably because of the losses in his life, he took his responsibility
as protector very seriously. To save
someone's life, to keep someone he cared about safe, he'd always been willing
to risk a lot and he respected other people who did the same. It was the reason, Sam was sure, that he hadn't
been as distant towards Jonas as he might have been.
All
this boiled down to one thing: if he was worried enough for her safety to
sit on the sidelines, to be cooped up in here and virtually unable to assist
in his own salvation, he must be very worried indeed.
She
nodded, knowing that - for now, at least - it was best to leave.
- - -
Carter
was halfway to the door when it occurred to him: something else had happened
that he'd neglected to report, not maliciously but because it had seemed insignificant
when compared to certain other events. But he remembered now that it was indeed significant...
or at least important enough to mention. "Nikolaev
showed up at my house last night."
Either
the total non-sequitur or the actual nature of the information stopped Carter
in her tracks at the end of the bed, and she looked at him oddly. "Colonel
Nikolaev?"
"You
know any others? Tolinev was there
too... and yes, that would be Lieutenant
Tolinev."
Carter
frowned. "What did they want?"
Jack
shrugged and leaned back against the wall again, boots on the bed. "Don't know. He said he needed to talk to me about something
and I wasn't exactly in the mood for chitchat, so I told him to take a hike."
Her
frown deepened. "What do you think
he wanted to talk about?"
"Maybe
his officers want to pack up and go home because I ignored them," he
said pointedly, then shook his head in confusion.
"I didn't really give him a chance to be more specific, but...
I get the strangest feeling that the guy just doesn't like me much."
That
warranted at least one sarcastic barb from the Major, but she continued to
look concerned. "Really?"
she asked, crossing her arms. "And
here I thought it was just me."
Now
Jack was fairly certain his expression matched hers. "Nikolaev's been giving you a hard time?"
Well, there was a reason for him to kick some serious Russian ass,
metaphorical or otherwise. They could come here, they could traipse around
his base, they could go through his Stargate, but they could not harass his people and get away with
it... possible international incidents and Second Cold War be damned.
Carter's
answer was studiously noncommittal. "It's
not that. He just... doesn't seem to
be a fan." She smiled thinly.
"For all we know, Rodney McKay's spreading horrible rumors about
us all over
Oh
yeah. From what he'd heard, he could
only imagine what kind of gossip McKay would be dishing about Carter. Probably not the kind she was thinking of.
"Well, not only did he give me attitude about 'dismissing' him,
he physically tried to keep me from closing the door in his face."
"Are
you going to tell
They
both knew that claiming the Russian had used physical force - no matter how
small - would put the General in an awkward position, but that was why they
gave him the stars on his shoulder, and Jack said as much. "Who knows, maybe he had a little too much
vodka trying to kill the bug up his as... butt and 'wasn't himself'. But I mean it, Carter... if he hassles you,
you let me know. I think right now
I could do just about anything and
blame it on mental illness."
Wow. Was it his imagination, or had she just blushed ever so slightly? Because he certainly hadn't meant it like that... although now that the notion was in his mind he couldn't think of anything else. "Does the same go for Teal'c and Jonas?" Carter asked, trying to mend the awkward silence.
Privately,
Jack didn't think so. After all, Teal'c
was more than a match for Nikolaev, not to mention the whole silent intimidation
thing he had going for him. The last
person affiliated with the SGC who'd picked on Teal'c had been a virus-infected
Marine who'd been taken care of easily enough. And Jonas... pragmatically he knew that he would
come to the defense of the newest team member, but it didn't do to dwell on
it. "Sure," he said anyway,
because to subject Carter to any special treatment would be putting his head
into the lion's mouth.
"I'll
be back," she promised, and she knocked for the MP stationed outside
to let her out. Watching her go, Jack
felt a bipolar mix of relief and disappointment rose up and imprinted themselves like a stubborn stain on his psyche.
It
was nerve-wracking being in the same room with her, never knowing when the
next seizure would strike... but it was also nice knowing that someone was
looking out for him, not from a television on another level but in the flesh,
face to face.
His
friends were all he had left, and he'd always been willing to take what he
could get.
- Four -
There is a destiny that makes us brothers,
No one goes his way alone;
All that we send into the lives of others,
Comes back into our own.
-
Edwin Markham
Halfway
through a game of memory with a deck of cards Airman Lee had passed him half
an hour ago, the same young man opened the door a few inches and peered inside.
"Colonel O'Neill?"
Ruefully
Jack admitted that this wasn't exactly standard guard-prisoner interaction,
but he wasn't exactly a prisoner and Patrick Lee was a gregarious kind of
guy anyway. "Yeah?"
"The
patient across the hall's been asking for you for the last hour, sir. Airman Wallis told him where to... that is,
he explained that you were unavailable, but he's very adamant, sir."
Crap. "Dagin?"
"Yes
sir. I'm sorry to bother your, uh, game, but..."
Jack
shook his head and pushed the cards into a sloppy pile on his bed. Maybe he'd get to talk with the little man after
all, if he was ready to talk and
didn't merely want to screech at him some more. And even that would, at least, give him something
to do. Briefly he debated having Lee
and Wallis escort the Muskrat over, but decided against it. Jack was here on a far more voluntary basis
than was Dagin, and if he had another seizure he would have plenty of time
to dash across the hall before the fugue hit.
He hoped.
- - -
Sam
already knew that it was going to be one of those days, and it was only two
in the morning.
Teal'c
had come up empty-handed, which was to say his information merely confirmed
what they had already known from the Colonel's account. He had wound up helping
"The
Colonel doesn't think they're hallucinations," Sam informed her teammates,
repressing her skepticism for the time being.
They were in her lab, a safe place to talk, to think and figure out
what they should tell the General. It
wasn't a matter of lying to
Jonas, perched on a stool with his chin cradled thoughtfully in one hand, straightened
suddenly and looked at Teal'c. "What
did I tell you?" he demanded excitedly, and Teal'c came within microns
of rolling his eyes.
On
the other side of the table, a hot mug of coffee in her hands, Sam looked
at the two of them with suspicion. "What
do you mean?"
Jonas
looked at her, not dissuaded by Teal'c's lack of
enthusiasm. "I it's just a theory,
but it's based on some very interesting reading material that Teal'c gave
me."
Oh
no. "Ah... really?"
"Well
first I started thinking... you're all assuming that this has something to
do with, you know... post-traumatic stress, because it didn't start happening
until after Colonel O'Neill escaped from Baal.
But what I think we've overlooked is the fact that it also didn't start happening until after
we came back from P3F-787. Not even
an hour had gone by before the first seizure."
"That's
true," Sam acknowledged. "But
nothing out of the ordinary happened on 787.
It was creepy, sure, but not dangerous."
"On
the contrary," said Teal'c thoughtfully, standing near the closed door
with his hands clasped behind him. "Dagin
Lor was most strange."
She
smiled. "Okay, I admit that. But--"
"Dagin
wasn't the only thing," Jonas protested.
"How often do you come across a civilization where the entire
population has just been slaughtered? Or,"
he amended, "kidnapped? In either
case, completely vanished?"
"It...
happens," answered Sam, aware of how callous she sounded. "It's not as unusual as you might think.
It's what the
Jonas
obliged: "We just returned from a planet where maybe hundreds of people
were killed, and all of a sudden Colonel O'Neill starts having these... visions
of people being killed." He eyed her knowingly. "Don't tell me that you don't see the connection."
A
tension headache was starting to set in behind Sam's eyes. She took a quick swig of coffee, and the hot
liquid burned her tongue. "You're
trying to say," she said slowly, her desire not to offend warring with
her exhaustion and her incredulity, "you think the Colonel is being haunted.
By the ghosts of 787."
Jonas
shrugged and Sam set her coffee down with more force than intended. "Teal'c, exactly what kind of 'interesting
reading material' have you been giving him?"
"I'm
not making this up," Jonas interjected.
"Plenty of highly-decorated journalists have documented evidence
of individuals receiving psychic visions while standing in places where large
numbers of people have died."
Resisting
the urge to comment on such 'journalists', Sam shook her head. "Colonel O'Neill isn't exactly psychic.
And these aren't visions, they're... tactile sensations."
"The
people I read about were just ordinary citizens," Jonas countered. "And if he is being...
contacted by somebody - or somebodies - who's to say that they'd only use sight and sound
as a way to communicate?"
Was
she actually having this conversation? Was
she really? "Fine. Say you're
right. What are they trying to communicate?
All that the Colonel's been experiencing is how they died.
What good does that do them?"
"It
motivates him to find out what happened to them, and avenge their deaths,"
Jonas answered, not missing a beat. He
knew that Sam wasn't buying it, she could see that in his eyes, but he was
too wrapped up in his theory to really care.
"And what he told you fits. He's
not just experiencing the same death over and over. He's not even remembering or reliving his own...
uh... deaths. He's jumping from person
to person; each time it's someone else. Men,
women, children."
Either
there was something about his energy that was... persuasive, Sam acknowledged,
rubbing under her eyes, or sleep had left her dangerously open to suggestion.
Whichever it was, she couldn't totally dismiss or completely
accept what he was saying. Ghosts. Tortured, restless sprits. The Colonel. Psychic impressions. It was just so incredibly... without scientific
backing. Why hadn't they all been
affected, if this was the case? How
were the fugues connected? And, damn
it, if it was true... what could they do now besides call for a priest?
"I'll
run it by the Colonel," she said reluctantly, thinking that he might
then decide that PTSD didn't sound so bad after all.
The
impromptu meeting broke up several minutes later, although Sam caught Teal'c's attention before he followed Jonas out the door.
"Listen, Teal'c, I'm really glad the two of you have hit it off.
But please, whatever you do... don't get him started on X-Files repeats."
"I
do not understand your aversion to such an educational program," he commented,
although it might have been a joke, followed by an observation: "You
were not convinced by Jonas Quinn's arguments."
She
sighed. "At this point, I think
I'd be willing to believe just about anything.
But... it's out there." She
scrutinized his face, thought she saw a quiver of disagreement. "You're
convinced?"
"Not
convinced," he disagreed. "However...
I have been thinking of O'Neill's descriptions."
"Of the attacks?"
Teal'c
nodded. "In both cases... a brief
but paralyzing pain, followed shortly thereafter by death."
Something
clicked in Sam's brain, the soft
but distinct sound of a puzzle piece snapping into place. She was both excited by the discovery and embarrassed
that she hadn't thought of it earlier.
"Zats. That's why there weren't any bodies. They were killed by Zats."
- - -
Dagin
Lor was on the bed when Jack entered, sitting with
his back against the wall in much the same way as Jack himself
had been earlier. His knees were pulled
up and he was using the tops of his thighs as an easel; in his lap was a steno
pad and in his hand a pencil, and the lead made soft
scratching sounds against the yellow paper.
He didn't seem to notice he had a visitor.
Several
changes had occurred in the man's appearance since he'd been brought in. He was still wearing the same tan pants and
dark shirt, but they appeared to have been laundered. His overcoat was folded over the back of the
chair. Although his beard was still a bristly mess, his hair had been combed
and probably washed.
Airman
Wallis nodded to Jack and closed the door, remaining outside.
Dagin
heard the sound of the lock engaging - his head tilted slightly and he seemed
to prick his ears - but his brown eyes didn't leave the paper's surface. "Persistence pays off," he said casually,
creating long curving lines with the lead of his pencil. Standing near the door, his hands in his pockets,
Jack was struck by how calm the man sounded; it was hard to believe the degree
and volume of shrieking that had come from that same individual only yesterday.
"What're
you drawing?" Jack asked, finding Dagin's preoccupation with the paper
even stranger than his request for a meeting.
The other man finally looked up, his eyes tired but infused with an
intelligence that Jack hadn't expected.
"My
wife," he said softly, angling his knees so that Jack could see from
where he stood. "Nani. She's...
dead. But I enjoy this.
Don't want to... forget. What she looked like. Want her picture somewhere. More... than my mind."
Despite
the calm quality of his voice, Dagin's words were still disjointed, his sentences
halting. Jack wondered if he was still
experiencing shock, or if he'd always been like this. Maybe the
Dagin
nodded and continued to draw. "We
had sons. Two. Ninan and Lev. They were
taken away. Will...
draw them next."
"Away?"
Jack asked, and then he cringed. Away. Of course. Taken by
the
"I
hope they're happy," said Dagin wistfully.
"Until I'm with them."
Biting
his tongue, almost envying the man for the dreamworld
he lived in, Jack took a step closer. Dagin
looked up quickly, his expression warning, and Jack stopped. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"
he asked, trying not to sound too harsh. Normally he wouldn't give a fig, but the knowledge
that this guy was a widower and a bereaved parent on top of being a sole survivor...
well, he wasn't immune to that.
Dagin
didn't seem disturbed by the change in topic, and now he only gave his artwork
half of his attention, directing the rest at Jack. "Have they locked you away... as well?"
Jack
automatically glanced over his shoulder, aware that Wallis and Lee must have
been gossiping loud enough for folks to hear the news in the next section. He sighed and corrected, "Nobody locked
me up. I asked to be put in isolation."
The pencil scritched and scratched. Dagin nodded in approval. "Sometimes it is good. Being alone," he said, and he smiled slightly
as though there was some hidden joke.
"Sometimes,"
Jack agreed.
"I
hate being alone."
Jack
shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"Okay..."
"But
sometimes..." Dagin looked affectionately
at the sketch of his wife. "Sometimes
it is needed. If you're alone. You're
fine."
Oh
yeah, this guy sounded like damaged goods all right. "You know, we still need to give you a
medical exam, make sure you don't have any poison in your teeth or bombs in
your heart. I think they've forgotten
about you for the time being, but you better believe Fraiser's
going to be back tomorrow ready and eager to swab you dry."
Dagin
looked up again, perplexed either by the long sentences or the mentions of
bombs and poison. "Later should
be okay," he said after a moment.
Jack's
eyes narrowed slightly. Not that he didn't still feel bad for the guy, but what was
the sense in letting him dictate what they could and couldn't do to ensure
their own safety? When else had they
let refugees set the timetable? "Should
it now?"
Impervious
- or oblivious - to sarcasm, Dagin nodded absentmindedly. "Yes. For
me."
Well
this conversation was just getting more fascinating by the moment. "I'm just warning you," he said acidly,
edging back towards the door. "And
do me a favor. The next time you get
bored, don't bother me... have Wallis get you a TV."
"I'm
not bored," Dagin disagreed, missing the point. "It's lovely here. Nice and clean. I like it."
The
pencil scritched and scratched against the paper.
- - -
One
of the perks of command was delegation. Sam
sent Teal'c to see
He
went right out of the lab, Sam went left, but she hadn't gotten far - in fact,
she'd just rounded the first corner - when she ran into Jonas. He was standing in the hallway, obviously waiting
for her. Impatient as Sam was to get
this over with, she didn't feel comfortable completely brushing Jonas off,
either, not when this was his idea to begin with.
Of
course, he didn't know that that was anything to be proud of. His expression was hesitant, but he began to
talk before Sam was able. "I'm
sorry about that. I was probably a
little... rude, wasn't I? And this
sure doesn't do anything to help my case," he added ruefully.
"Your case?"
"That
I'm not 'weird'." He shook his
head. "I didn't even realize how
all that sounded when I was saying it. I
guess just reading about all of SG-1's missions, and what I've been living
the past few months... it doesn't seem all that different from make-believe. Fantasy. I just got carried away."
Sam
found herself smiling at his self-effacement, wondering how much of it he
actually believed and how much he felt obligated to say. "It's okay," she assured him. "And I'm starting to think you're on to
something."
"Really?" He brightened.
"Most
of the deaths that the Colonel has been experiencing... I didn't think of
it before, but it could be that those people were killed by Zat
fire. Actually..." She paused for a second, thinking. "There was one that didn't fit the pattern,
someone who's throat was slit. Probably by a knife. But those are both weapons