Hayes was brought to the suite, looking white and angry with fear for his wife.
“Where’s Judy?” he demanded. “Is she alright?”
“She’s resting,” Maynard told him soothingly. “Sir, we need you to look at this list and tell us if you know any of these people.” He handed the paper to Hayes who thrust it away.
“Sir, there is nothing you can do for Mrs. Hayes at this moment,” Jack said. “This is what we need for you to do.”
The president glanced at the paper and began to deny knowing anyone.
“Hal Montoya,” he said, pointing to a name. “He’s our gardener, at our family home in Boston.”
Jack made a notation on the paper. “How long has he been with your family?”
“Since the kids were in diapers,” Hayes said. “What is that list?”
“We’re not sure,” Maynard said. “The symbiote was looking through these papers.” He showed the table scattered with paper to Hayes. The president looked them over, his brow creased in confusion.
“I recognize a few names,” Hayes commented. “None of these people have a say in decision making, though.”
Jack dialed the SGC. “Hank, can I steal Nyan for some research? Thanks. …. Nyan. O’Neill. I need you to do some research for me. Daniel is off-world. I need you to find out if anything weird has happened at any digs within the past few years or so. Start local and then spiral out. I don’t know. Unexplained deaths, people with missing time, missing people. You know –weird. I need it yesterday. Get Dr. Lee to help you, if you need to. Get me results within two hours.”
Hayes had gone into the bedroom, to his wife’s side. Sam politely moved to the doorway to give them space. Maynard was quietly talking with her. She lifted her zat and was apparently explaining to him how it worked.
“No, sir,” she said with a shake of her head. “Like the ships, they require naquadah.”
“We don’t want these things in the hands of our enemies,” Jack said. “Forget nukes; they’d be zatting each other out of existence.”
“What do you mean?” Maynard asked. Jack took the zat, looked around the room and picked a chair. He gave it three zats and the chair disappeared. Maynard slowly nodded; comprehension dawning.
“That’s why you’ve been careful about who uses them,” he surmised. “Yes, it wouldn’t do to have an assassin get a-hold of one of those. Jack, that was a two hundred-year old chair.”
Jack looked at the empty space. “Don’t tell Daniel.”
Davis arrived forty-five minutes later with the expected party in tow, plus a few others.
“I took the liberty, sir,” Paul said, nodding toward the four men who followed them in. HomeSec’s first team, T-1; Jeffries, Spurlock, Lopez, and Jablonski. “They are prepared to escort the president out immediately, if needs be, and the Daedalus is in a high orbit over DC.”
Jack nodded. “Good thinking, Colonel. Tony, I’m glad to see you. Did Colonel Davis fill you in?”
“He did, Jack, thanks,” Edmonds said. Jack stuck his head into the bedroom and then motioned for Edmonds to follow. He introduced Edmonds and Hayes.
“This man kept me sane all these years, Henry,” Jack said quietly. “He’s fully briefed on all things alien and he’s dealt with hostile take-overs before. Let him do his job. Please.”
Hayes looked Edmonds in the eyes, his own expression grim. “That woman has been my wife for thirty-three years, Doctor.”
“God willing, it’ll be thirty-three more, Mr. President.”
Hayes gave a nod and stepped aside.
“Nick, have you come up with anything on those names yet?” Jack asked the moment they were back in the main room. Nick was looking over the rest of the papers and glanced up.
“I made a few calls on the way over,” Nick said. “So far, we have a nanny, a cook, a best friend, and a librarian. They all have close ties to heads of state on these other lists. This took time, Jack. How long has Mrs. Hayes been infected?”
Jack cocked his head. “Infected. That’s an interesting way to put it. I like it. And we don’t know. I can tell you this, though; if all those people on that list are infected, we are in deep shit.”
“I doubt Inanna will help,” Sam said thoughtfully. “She’s expecting you to pick up the job. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get help. Does it? You need someone to help you scan; you’re not strong enough, yet. I can see the headache from the first try on your face. I’d suggest Zu, but he’s minding Erra.”
“No, leave Zu where he is,” Jack said. “Listen, if I need to learn this stuff, I need to learn it. Enki said my head hurts because I’m resisting.” He paced, making noises as he thought, and rubbing the side of his head. “Okay, maybe a map or a globe for me to focus on.”
Nick perched on the edge of the couch, unconsciously leaning toward Paul. “When you disintegrate a symbiote in someone, does that person get that extra protein? Like Sam has?”
Jack wasn’t the only one who paused. “That’s a good question,” he said. “We have…. Colonel, how many people have I … disinfected?”
Paul thought about it. “On this world? Very few, sir. If you’re thinking about using them to sniff around, I’d suggest calling in a few Tok’ra. The Jaffa would be too noticeable with their markings.”
“As a last resort,” Sam put in. “At least until we can test the 'disinfected'. Ja… General…. I’d be interested in seeing what you can do with that scanning thing if you’re sitting under the mikku while it’s pointed at the planet.”
“That’s a good one,” Paul told her in admiration.
Jack asked Maynard and Hayes to be excused. Jeffries and Lopez were left to escort Dr. Edmonds and to assist Maynard, if help was needed, while Spurlock and Jablonski were sent with Nick who was on his way to talk with Senator Friedman and find out if he remembered anything. The men would stay with Friedman until Edmonds cleared him.
Moments after Alvin landed in HomeSec’s backyard, they walked quickly down the stairs to the lab. The techs slowed in their work as they spotted the general hustling into the mikku. Sheppard watched and then peered over Jack’s shoulder.
“How come the chair at Antarctica doesn’t do that?” he asked, gesturing to the holo-map.
“We think this chair was made for a specific purpose,” Sam commented as they watched Jack swing the mikku around. She told him about the mikku and its partnership with the pukku. Hearing of the quiet commotion, Cassandra came down to watch.
“Jack, Nyan couldn’t get you on your cell,” she said. “He said Senator Friedman was at a luncheon last month. In Florida. He visited a dig that was being picketed by Seminoles. They were objecting to the dig because they claimed it was on sacred ground. The ground was not on reservation land, however, so the dig was allowed to continue. There was apparently a threat from a self-proclaimed shaman who told Friedman that evil would take his soul if the dig were allowed to continue. One of the diggers turned up dead a few days later. Nyan also said that he turned up three more dead diggers at other sites. Morocco, China, and Chile.”
“Call Paul and tell him,” Jack said, concentrating on the image in front of him. “Nick’s with him and they’re talking with Friedman.”
Cassie turned.
“And make sure Ronnie comes in to sign hiring papers,” Jack said. “There’s a contract outline on my computer. Get her over to Keir and have him start teaching her the details of HomeSec. When he’s done, get her to Inanna for some hands on with the council.”
“Security level?” she asked.
Jack thought about it. “Six. For the moment. And she isn’t to make any decisions, yet; she’s only taking notes and keeping me updated. Sam, what’s the first location on that list?”
“England.”
He took a deep breath and centered himself, not looking forward to it. Using the holo-map to guide him in real-time, he forced himself to center on London. Without meaning to, a marker appeared on the map the moment Jack identified a possible h
ost.
“Okay, that was easy enough,” he murmured to himself. “Does this thing take notes?” A small screen came up in the corner.
“It’s hooked up to our computers,” Sam quickly said. “Our computers are translating it.” She touched a screen close by. Jack glanced at it and saw the translation coming on. He settled back into it and began to spiral out until he covered the UK. Two more possible hosts were spotted.
“Ya know,” Jack muttered as he scanned the map. “If Inanna hadn’t been so busy with tribal wars, maybe she would have spotted all this starting and dealt with it then so we wouldn’t be dealing with it now.”
“And if Inanna had dealt with the Goa’uld, humans wouldn’t be populating the stars and we’d still be earth-bound.”
Everyone turned.
“Hey,” Jack grunted, pressing two fingers to his temple. “Did you unload the new wives?”
Daniel frowned in reprimand. “I freed three women and their children, yes, Jack.”
“That was fast,” Sam said, sliding an arm around his waist and giving him a squeeze.
“The newest commodity on Ra’batin is chocolate,” Daniel proudly informed them. “Buy stock in Hershey’s. What’s Jack doing?”
“Giving himself a migraine,” Jack said.
While Jack continued his scanning, Sam filled Daniel in on happenings. The information about the Florida dig interested him and he excused himself.
“I’m going to Florida!” Daniel called from the stairs.
“Take a team with you!” Jack called back just as he decided what to do with their problem. “Sam, call Col. Caldwell and let him know we need to borrow his ship. I want you and Sheppard to get up there. Start beaming these people up and put them in the brig for the moment. Do it quietly. Beam in, beam out. If they don’t already have a tag. Tell Hermiod if he has a better way of doing this, he needs to speak up now.”
It took the better part of the day to cover North America and Western Europe. After several hours, no one could get Jack’s attention. He had shut his eyes and was unresponsive as the map kept marking targets, so people assumed that he was ignoring them. Jack pushed himself to sense his targets, sweeping through cities with the sound of rushing waves through his ears. It seemed to get easier, the more he allowed his mind to stretch out. He knew he was hearing hundreds of different languages, actually sensing them as opposed to hearing them, and he understood intent if not meaning. Was that what Daniel heard? The cacophony of sound was harsh. One by one, he picked out inner voices that silently screamed to be heard. Jack heard them and the mikku routed the information up to the Daedalus’ computers. People at governmental offices, secretaries, clerks, messengers, someone’s favorite waiter, were all abruptly taken in a beam of light. Urgent phone calls to police began to filter in with insane messages of alien abductions and Armageddon. Only a handful of people knew what the beam of light was and put themselves quietly on alert, waiting to hear from HomeSec. He didn’t know when it was, but at one point he could no longer identify his own self among the crowd. He had become the world.
When the world brightened again, Jack found himself shaking and in incredible pain. He was flat. It sorta looked like a ceiling. Someone wiped his face with a cool cloth.
“Come on, Jack, I know you’re back with us.” Enki?
“Ppp….. ain…,” Jack managed. Cool hands touched his head.
“I know it hurts. When you decide to do something, you don’t hold back, do you?” It sounded like Enki….. “The pain is from the initial reaction. Part of your subconscious was resisting and it created stress on your body. Once you are completely unresisting, the pain won’t happen anymore.” Hands touched his head and Jack thought a small amount of the pain went away. “You had us worried. Next time, don’t try becoming the entire planet.”
Jack could sense the genuine worry in the old man and was touched.
“Hey, you.” Sam. Jack tried opening his eyes. It hurt, so he shut them again. He did see Daniel next to her, though. Soft lips touched his forehead. “You did it, Jack,” she said gently. “There are seventeen people currently being processed by our medics. We brought in Tok’ra to help. Inanna is doing another sweep of the planet, just in case. We think you got them all, though.”
Darkness overtook Jack again, and he passed out from the pain that threatened to explode his head.
“He’ll be alright,” Enki told them. “I’m going to close him down, like I did before. He’ll sleep for a while.”
“I thought the brain didn’t feel pain,” Daniel commented.
“It doesn’t,” Enki said. “The pain he’s feeling is from the rest of his body. Every nerve ending is awake and sending signals. No, they’re screaming the signals. His blood pressure is dangerously high and it’s causing the blood vessels in his head to pump hard. Basically, he triggered the world’s worst migraine. We need to get his pressure down, though, or he’ll give himself an aneurism.”
“Dr. Lam already has him on something,” Sam said, her face creased in worry.
“Yes, and letting him sleep will help even more,” Enki told her, ushering them from the room.
“Isn’t there a way to find symbiotes?” Daniel asked. “I mean, like attaching a spotter to the mikku?”
“You’re asking for a machine that identifies specific races and species,” Enki said. “Can you think of a program that will differentiate between a white person and a black person? Or a European and an Asian? Sure you could set up a spotter, but what about all the snakes that are natural to this world? Personally, I don’t think it can be done. We can get creative, but we are not gods who know all.”
It was several days before Jack was well enough to handle the presence of people. Enki continued to monitor him, much to Dr. Lam’s irritation. Inanna didn’t find anymore hosts. The only person that Jack seemed to find relatively calming for him was the presence of Olivia. Her baby thoughts and emotions were a cool glass of water to his wounded senses, so his partners left the baby at his side for short periods.
“What’s happening?” Jack whispered when he could focus again. Sam sat on the bed and held his hand as Daniel stood next to them.
“Well, Col. Sheppard got rid of all the snakes,” Daniel told him. “From what we can determine, that dig in Florida unearthed a nest of stored pottery that held symbiotes. The first one that was opened took over Professor Shelton and then began to distribute the others to select people. It seems that some were even sent through the mail and opened by people who thought they were opening a pretty vase or urn sent to them as a gift. They got a hold of someone, probably Senator Friedman or Mrs. Hayes, discovered what had been happening, and transferred themselves to hosts who had connections. You stopped another attack on the planet, Jack.”
“Yes, and all by yourself,” Sam said. “Jack, you fibbed to us.”
He cranked open an eye. “How so?”
“You never let anyone else play with the pukku, so we thought only you could use it,” she said. “Sheppard put it down once when he was tired, and an SF picked it up. Someone without the gene, mind you, and he accidentally disinfected a detainee. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“My toy,” Jack murmured, nestling down into the pillow. “If anyone could use it, someone might get it into their head to steal it. We need more pukkus.”
“If you had asked me, I could have told you anyone could use it,” Inanna said later when Sam complained. “I don’t have the Ancient gene, but I believe I told you I had the pukku long ago.”
Daniel’s head hit the wall. “She did say that,” he groaned.
“The chair is a different matter,” she said. “It has high level security systems attached to it, so only certain people can use it. Sam, really, this thing about gene therapy is wrong. Your Atlantis people shouldn’t be tampering like that.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “They seem to be fine.”
Inanna frowned as she tapped her fingers on her crossed arms. “It’s about evolution,” she said. “
The Ancients evolved which means their genes evolved. They created devices that responded to a specific genetic sequence. Your people are trying to force square pegs into round holes. Sure, they’ll fit if they are smaller than the hole, but there will be patches that are not connecting at the corners. By tampering with someone’s DNA, you could inadvertently trigger something unexpected and who knows if it will be a good thing or a bad thing. And those who are being tampered with are not evolving mentally with the new information. You may be creating a new Asgard. Evolution happens for a reason.”
The others thought about it. “Copies of copies that degrade with each copy,” Daniel commented. Inanna nodded.
“Correct,” she said. “I’m not saying this will happen, I’m just saying that it isn’t a good idea to be tampering with Mother Nature in this manner.”
The kids were allowed to come in to see Jack. They came in one at a time, reassured when they found him whole and just a little weak. Davy climbed onto the bed and nestled into Jack’s side for a while. He was napping there when Hayes and Maynard came for a visit. The president gave the boy a grandfatherly glance and pet the light brown hair.
“How are you feeling, Jack?” Hayes asked.
“Better,” Jack said. “At least light isn’t screaming at me anymore. How’s the Missus?”
“She’s better,” Hayes said with a nod. “Dr. Edmonds has been a tremendous help. And Senator Friedman is also recovering. Both Friedman and Judy have been writing pages and pages of information they remember from the symbiote. I’m not sure it’ll do us any good, the information seems to be related to ancient America, but it makes them feel good to write it out.”
Hayes wrinkled his face as he considered Jack. “I’ve been trying to understand what exactly it is that you did,” he said. “Your buddy Enki said you could have obliterated yourself into non-existence, if you had opened your mind up any further.”
Jack looked at him. “Really? He didn’t tell me that.”
Several more people came into the room. Sam, Daniel, Paul, Cassandra, and the rest of the kids. They stood quietly at the back of the room.
The Anunnaki Unification, Book 3: A Stargate SG-1 Fan Fiction Story Page 10