Hydra

by Stargate

  Dunamis (P3N-113),

  same day

  Daniel emerged from the event horizon into blinding sun. He threw up one hand to shield his eyes and moved to the side to clear the gate, but he tripped over something and sprawled onto crimson-spattered sandy ground. Lynch was dead beneath Daniel’s tangled feet, staring up at him, unseeing. Daniel scrambled to his feet and squeezed his own eyes shut, phantom pain shooting through his skull in sympathy. He willed himself not to vomit.

  The air was filled with a low keening sound — women wailing. Daniel looked up, half-startled by it, and realized a woman was crouched a few feet away, waving a bundle of what looked like blue and yellow cloth at him or at Lynch, he couldn’t be sure which. Her eyes were wide and filled with disbelief, her dirty face streaked with tears.

  “No one will hurt you,” he said automatically, but she shook her head and covered her face with the cloth, flinching. The veil effectively hid him from her sight, instead of providing protection from his gaze.

  “Fan out and provide cover,” Jack ordered the marines, cutting a hand at the two teams backing them up. He eyed the woman and pointed left, where other women were milling about, a clear signal to Daniel to get busy.

  Daniel turned to his left. Carlson was curled into the brush. Daniel couldn’t tell without turning him over, but it looked like one of his arms had been severed. “Jack,” Daniel said, but Jack was already kneeling beside the body, forcing the two women there to back away or be shoved aside. The look on his face raised the hair on the back of Daniel’s neck. “I don’t think this is the work of these people,” Daniel said quickly. “Look at them, Jack. They’re grieving. They’re…I think they’re praying for our dead.”

  Sam was peering down into a ditch. She jumped down into it and disappeared for a moment, then called, “Farlow is over here.” Teal’c eased down the embankment and disappeared as well. Daniel turned back to the woman nearest him, but she was running away, her gray robes flying up in the dust where her feet met the road. A few others turned to follow her, and the cries of those who remained died down until an eerie silence fell in the clearing.

  Frowning, Daniel took a longer look at the people gathered on the plain near the gate. It was hard to know for sure because most were cloaked head to toe, but he thought the majority were women, and scattered thoughts about matrilineal societies and other things he hadn’t had time to check ran through his head. This had been a mission he wasn’t acquainted with, one of the many briefings he’d trusted staff to prepare and had only glanced at peripherally, and now he was up against a near-complete information vacuum. The women had grown still, most of them watching either him or Jack with wary eyes. They were slowly retreating toward a small group at the back of the clearing, a cluster of dark blue and gray robes now formed into a thick circle, obscuring something from view.

  Sam reappeared at the edge of the ditch and Teal’c clambered up behind her. To Jack, Sam said, “Farlow’s neck was snapped clean.”

  “Sir!” Sergeant Cooper was gesturing wildly to them from some stones to Jack’s right, but Daniel left whatever grisly discovery that might be to Jack and took some cautious steps toward the cluster of women. His steps sent them into a flurry of reorganization, like birds crowding closer on a wire when startled instead of taking flight.

  “Please,” he said, holding one hand out. “I promise you, we are peaceful. I don’t know what happened here, but no one here is going to harm you. You have my word.”

  They rustled, and Daniel had the distinct impression words were exchanged, or maybe just signs, because he didn’t see them speaking to each other. There was one, a woman in white robes with a fringe of ebony beads obscuring her face, who focused her attention on Daniel even as the others shifted around him. From behind her, a soft sound in a familiar voice — his name, drawn out hoarsely: “Daniel.”

  The owner of that voice was currently twenty feet behind him, talking to Cooper, so he couldn’t be —

  “Daniel?”

  “Oh, my God,” Daniel said. He shouldered into the crowd, noting only distantly how they parted, then closed behind him. “Oh, my God.”

  Jack O’Neill — or a version of him that Daniel remembered from his first days on SG-1, brown hair, but with a patch on his chest reading ALPHA — was in pieces on the ground. Like something from a horror movie, a remembered atrocity. His torso had nearly been severed, his neck bent awkwardly at an angle no human Jack O’Neill could survive, and a puddle of gray fluid spread wide beneath him. “You’re not Daniel,” the duplicate said to him, rasping, his brown eyes settling on Daniel’s face, assessing him.

  “Yes, I am,” Daniel said, before he grasped its meaning. “I mean, I’m Daniel — the real — not yours,” he finished, breath short in his chest.

  “Did he make it?” The alpha Jack’s fingers twitched in the grass, provoking a sharp intake of breath from Daniel.

  “He’s alive,” Daniel said. “He told us everything.”

  “Good.” The robot made a horrible gurgling sound. Daniel stared at its mangled legs, burned by what might have been a staff blast. “Got something else you might want,” the not-Jack said. His body jerked. “Need to…” He fell silent then, lips moving but no sound emerging.

  “Need to what?” Daniel dropped to his knees beside the duplicate, warring with dual impulses, to touch or to shrink away. That’s not Jack, he told himself, but it looked like Jack, and he was suffering, and Daniel couldn’t bear to kneel there and do nothing. The robot’s lips were still moving, and its expression was agonized. “Can you…what can I do?”

  The robot grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard enough to make Daniel gasp. When it met his eyes, Daniel tried to read something there, anything to understand what it wanted to tell him.

  “Daniel, what?…Oh, my God.” Sam crouched beside him, one hand on his shoulder. The robot’s glance flicked to her, then back to Daniel, but he didn’t release Daniel’s wrist. “Is it the original…the alphas?”

  “I think so, yes. Something must have…Jack was trying to tell me, but he’s lost the ability to speak. It might be his power source, or…I don’t know.” Daniel turned his face to Sam and saw the mirror of his own stricken feelings on her face. “Can you do something?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She bent to the task, hesitating only a moment before she put her hands deep into the mechanism of his chest. The robot’s grip tightened on Daniel’s wrist, and he shook it hard. Daniel met its eyes and tried not to think about its pain, tried to get the job done and understand what it wanted him to know.

  He looked at his wrist, where his pulse thumped hard against his skin and the robot’s fingertips, and suddenly he knew. “Dan,” he said, the solution so obvious he could kick himself for taking so long to realize. “Alpha Daniel?” The robot gave a tiny nod and released him. Daniel stood and turned in the same movement, headed for the gate at a dead run, and didn’t stop until he’d finished dialing home.

  “Daniel,” Jack said, the real Jack this time, at Daniel’s elbow as though drawn there by something Daniel didn’t say. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I have to get Dan — the Daniel duplicate — here now,” Daniel said, well aware he was saying it as though he were talking to a five-year-old, and he felt a pang of regret. “Now, Jack. Your duplicate is dying, and he can’t talk.”

  “Uh huh,” Jack said, nodding like he was told every day his doppelganger was kicking off mere yards away. “SG-one-niner calling Stargate Command.”

  “This is Hammond. Report, Colonel.”

  “Sir, all of SG-13 are dead, but the area is secure. I’m not really sure what the hell is going on, but Daniel thinks it’s urgent that you send the Daniel robot through to the planet.” Now, Daniel mouthed at him, and Jack’s lips thinned, but he said, “Right away, sir.”

  “Stand by,” Hammond said, and a moment later, the gate shut down.

  “There had better be — ” Jack began.

  “Yes, Jack, there is
.”

  The gate roared to life, wormhole pushing out into the air, and a few seconds later Dan stepped out, flanked by two marines. He stopped, and then ran toward the DHD, the escort jogging to keep up. “Where,” he said, and Daniel pointed the way, running behind him as Dan sprinted toward the Jack duplicate.

  “Okay, that’s not weird or anything,” Jack said, as he kept pace.

  This time the women parted for them as if asked to step aside, and Dan dropped to the ground beside his teammate. Just as he had with Daniel, alpha Jack grasped Dan’s wrist and held on, but Dan put his hand over alpha Jack’s. Neither of them spoke, but Daniel knew now that they were talking.

  “What is this — ?” Jack stopped, and his face wrinkled up in recognition. “They’re talking on some kind of communication system, aren’t they.”

  “Yes. At least, I think so,” Daniel said, watching Dan’s face intently. Sam moved to stand silently at Daniel’s shoulder, Teal’c at Jack’s, and all four of them stood by while the duplicates communicated in silence. The story flashed through Dan’s eyes — sorrow, anger, worry, in all too human flickers of anguish.

  Dan reached into the alpha Jack’s jacket and fished around, then produced a piece of torn blue and yellow cloth. Daniel recognized it as the same type of cloth the woman had held across her face when he arrived. This cloth was wrapped around something, and Dan shoved it at Daniel, who took the heavy, small object carefully. “It’s what the theta team was after,” Dan said. “My team was tracking them. They came here to take that, and my team stopped them. SG-13 blew into the middle of this mess and the thetas…they…” Dan stopped and lowered his head. “They tore your people apart on their way out of here. Apparently they wanted to be gone before you arrived. I guess the fact that Lynch called for backup scared them off.”

  “But why?” Daniel knelt down next to the duplicates. “What is this all about?”

  “I don’t know their ultimate goal, but whatever it is, they thought that was important to it.”

  Daniel unwrapped the piece of cloth and stared down at the heavy black object and its inscribed words. “This looks familiar,” he said, handing it up to Sam.

  “Very,” she said, passing it across to Teal’c.

  “Share with the class,” Jack said, reaching out a hand.

  “It’s similar to the quantum mirror device,” Dan said, causing a visible flinch from Jack.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear it from the one who’s not a carbon copy,” Jack said.

  Daniel glared up at him. “Quantum mirror,” he reiterated, forcing an irritated squint from Jack.

  “Whatever they are looking for, if it’s tied to that mirror, it’s technology we don’t have a true grasp of,” Sam said, passing the item to Jack. “Which…”

  “…could be a problem,” Daniel finished for her.

  “Clearly.” Jack handed the thing back to Daniel.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Daniel asked his duplicate. Dan jerked his head up, as if he’d forgotten Daniel was there, and then returned his attention to the Jack duplicate, completely distracted. Dan put his hand on the duplicate’s chest, left it there for long moments until the duplicate had stopped moving, eyes open, eerily still, the spark of whatever life it had gone completely.

  Jack turned and walked away. Sam shifted, cleared her throat. Daniel stood up and looked at her, at the tears in her eyes, then back at Dan, at his hand still resting on the duplicate’s chest. He looked away and followed Jack back into the clearing.

  “I could have gone a long time without seeing that again,” Jack said, when Daniel stepped alongside him.

  “It’s…” Daniel reached for a word, thinking of the utter sorrow on Dan’s face.

  “Yeah.” Jack cleared his throat and nodded at the black stone. “You know what that is?”

  “I have no idea.” Daniel wrapped the cloth around it. “But the people here must know.”

  “They will want the return of their property,” Teal’c said, as he joined the circle.

  “Too bad,” Jack said. “This thing is ours until further notice.”

  “Jack, I think — ”

  “Don’t think, Daniel, please. It will only get us into trouble.”

  “Sir.” Sam called their attention. She was still standing over Dan, but the group of women had dispersed, and only one remained beside the “body.”

  Jack tapped Daniel on the chest. “Stow that thing,” he said, and Daniel stuffed it into his vest for lack of a better option.

  The woman moved toward them, white robes shifting around her feet as she walked. Because he couldn’t see her eyes, Daniel couldn’t get a read on her intentions, but she seemed calm. In charge. She held her hand out, palm up. “You have the kei,” she said. “It is not yours to take. Please give it to me.”

  There wasn’t any question in Daniel’s mind what she was referring to, but Jack’s hand landed on his chest just then, a warning to keep back. “Can’t do that,” Jack said. “Sorry. Normally we would, but the, uh, the kei is dangerous.”

  “It has been ours always, and it is not dangerous to us.” The woman lowered her hand slowly to her side and tilted her head, her veil of beads shifting and sparkling in the light. “It is not yours to take.”

  “Technically true,” Jack said, the depth of his discomfort apparent in his posture.

  “We don’t intend to keep it forever,” Daniel said. “This is an unusual situation. The people who came to your world, who killed these people — you must recognize that even though they looked like us, they weren’t us. Not exactly.”

  Bead-woman was still as a statue, and Daniel suppressed a shiver. It was like she was staring straight through her veil and his skin directly into his soul. Which was ridiculous, but he had the urge to reach out and yank those beads aside to see what he was dealing with. “You live,” she said softly. “They were merely alive.”

  Daniel nodded and added a wince. “A good way to put it. Sort of.”

  “I do not understand why you must keep from us this thing we need.”

  “Because we need it also, or many more people might die.” Daniel stopped, his heart in his throat because it had only just occurred to him that he had no idea if the rogue team had harmed any of her people. It wasn’t like him to forget to ask, but the feel of Lynch’s dead weight, the sight of his blood, and the drama of seeing the likeness of his friend torn in half — he wasn’t focused. “Did those who came here before us hurt your people?”

  “They hurt us, but they saved us. And now they steal from us.”

  Daniel saw himself through her eyes in an instant — copy upon copy upon copy, each exhibiting behavior so different from the previous ones. And yet not so different at all. A flare of shame curled in his belly.

  “We aren’t…we don’t…” Sam stopped trying to explain almost as soon as she began, and Daniel wished she hadn’t tried. The moral conundrum twisted in on itself endlessly, right and wrong supplanted by “must.” Must find the answers. Must save their people. Must not care about the cost.

  “I’m Daniel,” he said softly. “What’s your name?”

  “I am called Asha.” She turned away from him. “I do not speak for my people. There is one who must know you before you leave this world.”

  “We’re not going to give you back your kei,” Jack said. Daniel had a brief impulse to slap his hand over Jack’s mouth to stop whatever might come out next so they would actually be allowed to leave, but Jack was right. There was no point in beating around the bush. “And we don’t have time for this.”

  “If they are possessed of knowledge about the device, we would be wise to meet with them,” Teal’c said. “Even if only briefly.”

  “Teal’c’s right, Jack.” Daniel nodded to Asha. “We have no idea what this thing does.”

  To his right, Sam slipped away from the group. She dropped down beside Dan and the Jack robot and spoke to Dan quietly. Dan staggered to his feet, braced by Sam’s ha
nd on his elbow, and turned toward Daniel, who flinched at the sight of him, gray fluid wetting his face, his eyes.

  Artificial tears, shades of gray.

  “That thing is part of a power device,” Dan said, in a voice cracking hoarse with very real sadness. “Jack didn’t know what it is, or what it does. Only that they wanted it, and would have done anything to get it.”

  “Did he say anything else we can use?” Jack stood beside him, hard as nails on the outside, but Daniel had felt him flinch too.

  “There’s nothing human left in them.” Dan’s face crumpled, the picture of angry grief, and tears pricked the corners of Daniel’s eyes in response. “What they did to your people…to my team…they are only machines. Dangerous machines.” He looked up and stared at Jack. “You have to destroy them. No matter what it takes.”

  “I know,” Jack said in an entirely different tone, one Daniel had heard him use mostly with children and dogs.

  Dan nodded, just one jerk of his head. Then he pulled away from Sam and headed straight for the DHD, in response to an order Jack hadn’t given.

  “Carter, send the IDC and get him out of here. Tell Hammond to find out everything the robot told him. And keep the marines on the search. There’s still two alphas unaccounted for.” Jack pointed at the robot torso in the grass. “Have the marines take that back with them. See if there’s something they can get out of it at Area 51.”

  “No,” Dan said, turning toward them with his hand already on the first glyph. He stalked back over to them, wiping at his face. “He gave his life for Earth. He deserves better. Don’t you let them tear him apart, you son of a bitch.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “I didn’t suggest you should.” Dan stared him down. “Let me take him back, but just…I know they have to examine him, but…please, just bury him when it’s over. It’s what you’d want done for you.”

  All of them had wills, letters, orders hidden away. All of them hoped their friends would never need those documents, but there was comfort in knowing their last wishes would be followed. Daniel blinked and looked at Sam, at the lines and shadows on her face, and then back at Jack, who was avoiding his gaze. Two Daniels was at least one too many.