by Jamie Duncan
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m sorry, sir. We should’ve tried to take him.” Sam winced as she made a final turn with the strip torn from the hem of Teal’c’s t-shirt and pulled the knot gently, binding the Colonel’s little finger to the next one.
“Ow,” he said dully, as though by rote. Then: “It’s only a broken finger, Major. Save the heroics for the big stuff.”
Sam looked up from her task and nodded toward the faint shimmer of the force field. Beyond it, Daniel was standing like he had been for the last twenty minutes: head thrown back, lips moving around unvoiced words, eyes roaming the text on the door. “If we’d acted then, maybe we wouldn’t be here now,” she said. “Tactically, this position is way worse.”
“Thanks,” the Colonel answered and pushed her hands away as she made some final adjustments. “Insightful analysis.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I got it, Major. Things suck. Pretty much par for the course.” He started to rub the back of his neck with his damaged hand but grimaced at the sting of pain and stopped. “Any minute now some Jaffa’s going to come in here and be totally humorless and make us kneel.” He got up, walked a few paces and flicked the field experimentally, then sucked on his tingling finger. “I hate kneeling.”
“As do I,” Teal’c said. He was sitting against the rock wall with his eyes closed. One of his hands rested on his stomach above his pouch, fingers kneading it slowly. There was a faint crease between his eyebrows.
“Well, it’s not like you had to do it a lot in your former life,” Jack said, and Teal’c smiled at him, ever so slightly.
Sam wasn’t too enthralled by the idea of another audience with a Goa’uld either. Taking the Colonel’s cue, she rubbed her neck and rolled her shoulders. There was a whopper of a headache looming at the back of her skull, and the pulsing shudder of the mine wasn’t helping. Probably dehydration, she told herself, or low blood sugar.
The single MRE packet Aris had thrown into the makeshift cell with them lay beside her, open and empty.
For his part, Aris was finishing his second MRE and starting on the third. He tapped Daniel on the shoulder and asked, “What’s this one?”
Daniel gave it a distracted glance. “Uh, macaroni.”
“Is that good?”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on the text. “If you like chicken.”
Sighing a little wistfully, Sam pressed her index finger onto empty foil and picked up a crumb of granola.
When it was halfway to her mouth, the Colonel said, “Are you going to share that with the rest of us?”
She met his eyes and put her finger on her tongue. He turned away with a small frown, and she felt a tremor of satisfaction, even though her brain was throbbing and too big for her head. The nice little fantasy about daiquiris and nachos she started to build was interrupted by a kick to the side of her boot.
“What?” she snapped.
“What, sir,” he corrected.
“Whatever,” she muttered under her breath and went back to cleaning crumbs off of the wrapper.
“Excuse me?”
“Whatever, sir.”
The Colonel was scowling down at her. “What’s behind that door?” he demanded.
She looked up at him and shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t know.” I don’t have X-ray vision, she added to herself. “Something the Ancients don’t want anybody to get at, obviously.” There was a sort of sickly pulsing in her eyeballs, and her mouth tasted like bright copper.
“Like what?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s quarantined. Maybe there’s a really nasty bug in there. Like the one that killed them off.”
“A weapon,” Teal’c said, without opening his eyes. “Something of great power that they wish to safeguard for their return.”
O’Neill aimed his finger at him. “Yeah. I like Teal’c’s idea.”
“You would,” she said, this time not quite far enough under her breath and the Colonel’s scowl came back to the power often.
On the other side of the force field, Aris was choking down his stolen macaroni and cheese while watching his prisoners. Daniel was oblivious, still in the same pose, only now one of his hands was following his eyes across the text, like he was trying to snatch the meaning out of the air in front of him. The rumbling vibration of the crushers was making her butt numb, but the Colonel was standing up near the shield and Teal’c’s legs were sticking out and she had no space at all for her own legs and everyone else had dibs on space and good ideas and she was empty, full of nothing but “yes, sirs” and “I don’t knows”, like somebody else lived in her head, their orders, their intentions—
“You would?” Another kick on the side of her boot.
She glared up at him. His orders, his plans, his intentions. “Maybe it’s not a weapon. Who knows why the Ancients would lock something up? Maybe it’s somebody’s garage for all we know.” She was tired of saluting by reflex like her arms didn’t even belong to her, like somebody inside was pulling strings, like Jolinar was using her voice and looking at Sam in the mirror and thinking “me”—
Rolling onto her hip, she leaned over low and retched up one third of an MRE.
The Colonel crouched in the narrow space and brushed her hair back with the good fingers of his left hand.
“Don’t feel so good, sir,” she gasped. When he pressed the canteen against her arm she took it and allowed herself a small sip. It was mostly empty.
“That makes two of us,” he said, giving her neck a pat.
“Three of us,” Teal’c added.
She raised her head and gave the Colonel a thin smile of apology. Aris was still watching.
“Better pick up the pace, doctor,” he suggested to Daniel, and finished the last of the MRE.
Daniel’s eyes were starting to throb with the force of the headache twisting through his brain. He pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. The intertwined glyphs had taken on a uniformity he couldn’t unravel, and they marched behind his eyelids even when his eyes were closed. He was acutely aware of his teammates a few feet away; his fingers twitched with sympathetic pain for Jack’s injury. He would have to think faster, or make a convincing argument as to why he hadn’t made more progress. Lying might work, if he knew what lie to dish out or what Jack had in mind from this point forward. Options were nonexistent, it seemed, but his perspective was limited to the wall, and the Ancients’ warning, and his fear for his teammates.
He squinted up at the silent message, then pressed his palms flat against the cool metal. The glyphs were similar to the rongo rongo of Easter Island, but it made no sense—Easter Island had been populated a mere 1500 years, a drop in the bucket compared to the Ancients and the Goa’uld. He sighed. Polynesian culture was not a specialty he’d ever cared to pursue in more than a superficial way, and he had no reference tools at all to consult. “Maybe what’s there developed independently on and offworld from something much older,” he said out loud.
“Talking to yourself?” Aris asked. Daniel slipped his glasses back on, ignoring the twinge of pain that shot through his temples, and took a long look at Aris’ face.
“Sometimes it helps to solve a puzzle if I trace the parts out loud,” he said, without any expectation that Aris would understand. “I need a few minutes rest. To think it over.”
“Rest standing up,” Aris said, and pointed to the wall. “Feel free to lean.”
Daniel shifted his glance across the chamber, to Sam’s pale face, then to Teal’c, whose eyes were closed. Finally he met Jack’s eyes. Somehow he was going to have to find out if Jack had a plan to get them out of this. Even an attempt at escape was better than nothing, and he knew at this point Jack’s focus was on that and nothing else. To Aris, he said, “Just a few minutes.”
“You humans are so needy,” Aris said, as he rose from his perch at Daniel’s side. “It’s amazing you ever figured out the Stargate system in the first place.”
“Yes,
isn’t it,” Daniel said, pushing back a flare of personal irritation.
Jack stood as they approached, his bandaged hand dangling at his side. “Daniel?” he said, eyeing Aris. “Everything all right?”
“Peachy,” Daniel said. Aris hovered right behind him. “I’m not making much progress.” He glanced at Jack’s hand. “How’re you guys doing?”
“The sooner we get out of here, the better,” Jack said, nodding toward Teal’c, who sat sweaty and still in the corner. “I don’t like this place,” he added, adding a tight smile to punctuate the understatement.
“Is there anything I can do to help, Daniel?” Sam pushed up from the ground and brushed her hands off on her BDUs.
Jack shot her an annoyed look. “How about if you wait until I give you the go-ahead, there, Carter?”
“Just trying to help, sir,” she said, but the frown that creased her forehead matched her clipped tone.
“Guys?” Daniel said, looking from one to the other. The tension ratcheted up tenfold as they stared at one another. “What’s going on?”
“Carter here thinks she’s running her own show,” Jack said. “She’s been at it all day.”
“She has not.” From behind Daniel, Teal’c’s voice rose, and they turned to see him watching them. “You are mistaken, O’Neill. Major Carter only offered her assistance.”
Jack turned to him. “You haven’t been right since Apophis brainwashed you, have you? How many times have you switched sides? How do we know that you won’t turn on us again?”
“Jack!” Daniel said. He reached out a hand to grip Jack’s arm, to get his attention, but the force field flared red between them and sent a sizzling jolt up Daniel’s arm. Daniel stepped back, knocking into Aris, who shoved him away and retreated a few paces, all the better to hold weapons on them.
“Sir… sir.” Sam lifted her hand in an appeasing gesture and then scrubbed it over her tired face. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have waited for your order.”
“You have done nothing wrong,” Teal’c said, still staring at Jack. They were toe to toe now, eye to eye. “Nor have I.”
“They’re all in my head,” Carter said haltingly. She squeezed her eyes shut. “All of them. Every one she took as host.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack said, his voice rising. “Make sense, Carter!”
“Do not raise your voice to us in this manner,” Teal’c said, tensing with readiness. Daniel glanced at Aris, who was paying rapt attention to the little tableau, and then over at Sam, whose features were contorted into a mask of horror.
“It’s happening again,” Sam whispered. She backed away from Jack and Teal’c until she hit the wall and could go no farther. “I don’t want your memories!”
In that moment, it clicked for Daniel—Sam was talking about Jolinar. Not her memories, but the memories from Jolinar’s blending. He leaned as close to the force field as he could and said then-names sharply, breaking their focus on each other. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not about us. Do you hear me? Stop this.”
Jack blinked at him, then turned toward Sam, who was sinking toward the ground, curling inward in a fetal position. “Carter,” he said sharply. He took a couple of steps in her direction, then stopped suddenly and raised his hands to his head. “What the…” He staggered backwards and Teal’c stopped him, holding him up with one hand on his elbow. “Okay, that’s…” Jack sat down abruptly; it looked more like a fall, to Daniel, but Teal’c eased the way. “I know that’s not real,” he said, and his hands went to the back of his neck, scrabbling down the back of his collar and over his bare skin there, and then to his throat, to smooth the unblemished skin. “Yeah,” he said, as if confirming something the rest of them weren’t privy to.
Daniel looked up to find Aris watching them. He didn’t seem nearly as wary as he should; this was obviously not a new experience for him. “What the hell is happening to us? You know, don’t you?”
Aris wavered under Daniel’s direct, furious gaze, then admitted, “I’ve seen it before.”
“And you didn’t think you needed to warn us?”
“What good would it have done?” Aris shrugged. “The effects are temporary. I didn’t think it would take you long to get this thing open.”
“Well, you were wrong.”
“Obviously. My faith in your abilities was clearly misplaced,” Aris said.
“You need to take the others back to the surface,” Daniel said. “I’ll keep working on this, as long as you want. Just—”
“Not a good idea,” Jack said. He was pale as a ghost. Teal’c helped him up from the ground; Jack patted Teal’c on the arm, a wordless apology, and Teal’c released him. The tension between them dissolved as quickly as it had risen. “We’re not leaving you down here.”
“Jack, I don’t need you here.” Daniel hated to say it, but if the brutal truth would convince Aris, then he didn’t care. “I don’t need any of you. Not even Sam.”
“You do need me,” Sam said. She made no attempt to get up, but her eyes were like laser points, focused on Daniel’s shaky argument. “Maybe if you can’t get the thing open with words, I can do it with science. That device…” She pointed to the small indentation in the wall to the left of the door and then let her hand fall to her lap. “I should stay.”
“I don’t need you,” Daniel said again, a bit more desperately, but he could tell from Jack’s expression it was a losing battle.
“With what just went through my head… or, didn’t…” Jack cleared his throat, but didn’t elaborate. “We all stay. Or we all go. I vote for ‘go’.”
“What gave you the idea your vote counted?” Aris said.
“Then tell me what’s happening to us, so we can use it to help,” Daniel said.
“Would if I could.” Aris crooked a finger at him, and Daniel reluctantly moved away from his friends until he was back before the door. “I’ve seen it in Sebek’s Jaffa. Even in Sebek himself. It’s been getting worse lately, but he keeps coming down here. It’s like he can’t stay away.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t think this was information I might need to know,” Daniel muttered.
“Is that enough of a ‘reference’ for you?” Aris taunted.
“Every piece of information is part of the key,” Daniel snapped. “You don’t seem to be affected by whatever this is.”
“Very perceptive,” Aris said. Daniel waited for an explanation, but of course Aris had nothing else to say on the matter; it was ridiculous to expect him to give up anything that wasn’t pried out of him.
“Listen.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck slowly. “Why can’t Daniel work on this up top? Take a few notes, maybe… work from them…”
Aris tilted his head to the side, then said, “Too late.” A moment later, the sound of Jaffa stomping down the corridor came to Daniel faintly, growing closer.
Jack sighed. “This day just gets better and better.”
Jack wondered if Jaffa did something special to their boots to get that extra stomping, ringing sound when they marched. It was all about the intimidation and the rib-cracking, which, admittedly, was pretty intimidating. He figured it wasn’t a coincidence that the Jaffa stomped in precisely the same rhythm as the throbbing in his finger and the pounding in his head. A conspiracy all over.
He rubbed his neck and listened to the stomping and the syncopated thudding of the crushers and pictured Aris Boch on the receiving end of some Jaffa intimidation. Then he remembered that Aris had probably been there and done that, thus their current predicament. So, he decided to multitask, turning part of his attention to actively hating the Goa’uld. Oh, and because they were so lucky, an apparently obsessive and possibly crazy Goa’uld.
“Is there any other kind?” Daniel asked.
Startled, Jack looked at him through the field. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Yeah.”
“The part about the boots?”
“No,” Daniel answered. “Not the p
art about the boots.”
“This place sucks.”
Teal’c glowered through the force field at Aris. “I concur.”
Jack was going to respond with something snarky about how nice it was that Teal’c was such a team player, but Jaffa-shadows were looming, and the stomping was getting closer, and Jack was too busy counting the shadows to deal with Teal’c at that moment. Four of them. Two front, two back, Sebek probably in the middle. And, of course, Aris Boch with his blaster, and the force field, and the fact that Carter was still hunched over her knees against the wall, staring blankly, and that Teal’c was standing down but still scowling his most dissatisfied and scary scowl. There was a crawling in Jack’s skin his rubbing fingers couldn’t scour away. He saw kneeling and possibly rib-cracking intimidation in his future.
“What are those? Lizards?” Jack aimed his chin at the helmets of the honor guard that swept out of the narrow tunnel mouth and down the ramp into the antechamber. They were in the standard cowls and grieves, two of them in skull caps and the other two in helmets thick in the neck and extending out into long, toothy snouts. Red, beady eyes glowed as the Jaffa took up positions in a row behind their god.
“Crocodiles,” Daniel corrected. “It’s a symbol of rebirth.”
Jack’s smile was thin and bitter. “I love their sense of irony, don’t you?”
Daniel nodded and turned resignedly to face the nemesis du jour. “Funny,” he said.
Coming as close to the field as he could get without numbing his face, Jack cocked his head and studied the Goa’uld. “Funny?”
“The tattoos.” Daniel pointed at the forehead of the nearest Jaffa. “That’s Lord Yu’s mark.”
“Huh,” Jack said. He wasn’t sure whether to celebrate about that or not, but he didn’t have time to think on it too much, since the Goa’uld was stepping forward and looking down his nose at them.
As anyone who knew the Goa’uld would expect, Sebek was wearing a fine specimen of a host, easily six-two-and-a-bit without the elaborate King Tut headdress. He tipped the scales at two-twenty give-or-take, but was fine-boned, full of lean muscles, like a gymnast or a diver. His eyes, traced out in dark kohl, were pale grey and too direct, aimed at Jack like they could flay him, turn him inside out. Even though his own eyes were burning and his vision was a little foggy at the edges, Jack looked back and didn’t blink, and Sebek’s full lips curled upward at the corners in a coy grin, part condescension, part admiration. His skin was dusted with gold all the way down his neck to the gilded crocodile cowl that encircled his shoulders and gripped the ends of his linen cloak in sharp ruby teeth. Jack wondered if any Goa’uld would be able to fight at all in that short linen skirt and delicate gold-wire sandals. Then again, the ribbon device on Sebek’s right hand meant that he wouldn’t have to. Rib-cracking intimidation was going to be the least of Jack’s worries.