by Jamie Duncan
She nodded her agreement. “Especially if we can’t warn the SGC that security has been compromised.”
This wasn’t news to Jack. “I asked for options.”
Sam frowned and went to the door. There was no control panel on this side. Reluctantly, she faced him. “Escape. Get Daniel. Steal a ship or find the Stargate, if there is one. Remove the Goa’uld.”
“That’s what I like about your plans, Carter. They’re elegant in their simplicity.” He reached to pull his hat off, and remembering that he’d lost it, scrubbed at his hair instead, his face pulled into a scowl that made the notch between his eyebrows deeper under the livid red mark from the ribbon device. He leaned back and angled his face closer to the bars to get a look out into the hall, where the Jaffa was watching them. He waggled his fingers at him. “How ya doin’?” After a moment of getting nothing on that front, he shuffled stiffly to the far side of the cell, slid down the wall and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His broken finger stuck out at an angle.
“You okay, sir?” Sam asked, coming to crouch beside him. When he dropped his hands, she peered closely at the burns on his forehead. There were a few small blisters starting. It had been close.
“My brain feels like scrambled eggs, but I don’t have a snake in my head, so I’m doing better than some.” As she sat back on her heels, he pinned her with a gaze that was sharper than it had a right to be after what Sebek had done to him. “What the hell happened?”
Teal’c disengaged from his staring contest with the Jaffa guard and settled onto one knee in front of them. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the guard before turning back and speaking in a low rumble. “We were disabled, as were Sebek’s Jaffa. Sebek himself was in distress.”
“Or the host was,” Sam speculated.
The Colonel’s gaze sharpened even more. “Disabled how?”
She could tell he had an idea but was still gathering the pieces.
“You felt it, too, sir, in the antechamber. Pain, headache, nausea, um… paranoia.” She winced an unvoiced apology in the Colonel’s direction. “And—” She faltered a little as she tried to grope for words to describe it.
“Memory,” Teal’c finished for her.
That was it. The word seemed to snap the disorientation, the disjointed images, the wild swings of emotion into context. She nodded and settled back against the wall next to the Colonel. It was difficult to pin down: a memory, but not just pictures. “I could feel it,” she said. “I wasn’t just remembering. I was feeling it.”
“What?” the Colonel asked.
She pressed her lips shut for a moment. “Jolinar. But not just her.” Shaking her head in frustration, she tried to sort it out. “Her memories, but… not her point of view.”
Involuntarily, her hands clenched into fists on her knees. There was a sickening lurch inside as she thought about the antechamber, Sebek aiming the ribbon device at the Colonel. Daniel had been so still, his glasses reflecting the killing red. She’d been facing off against a Jaffa, and he’d been coming at her, but he’d stopped, clutched at his stomach, fingers scrabbling at his pouch. She’d been able to hear the squeaking scream of the symbiote inside him. Of course she couldn’t have; the sound had been in her head, but it had been more than that. It had been coming at her from outside, and it had been inside her, winding around her spine, a voice hissing in her brain.
“Hosts,” she whispered. Her fingernails were making tiny crescent cuts in her palms. How many millennia were encoded in Jolinar’s DNA? Generations. The Nascian man she took had been terrified. The memory twisting at the base of her skull, she opened her eyes, focused on Teal’c’s stony face.
She’d fallen and the pain in her knees when she’d hit the stone floor of the antechamber had shocked her back to herself again.
When she’d looked up, Daniel was raising his head and there was blood on his lips, and he’d smiled.
Her voice was thick. “I’m sorry, sir. I tried to get to him, I swear.”
Teal’c’s expression didn’t change, but he managed to convey sympathy anyway. “I, too, was overcome with sensations.” Now his scowl deepened. “Adoration for the god, Sebek,” he clarified, like he was confessing crimes. “It was most unpleasant.”
“False god,” O’Neill said.
“False god,” Teal’c agreed.
Tilting her head so she could see the Colonel’s face better, Sam asked, “You, sir?”
One eye closed in a wince as he looked into the middle distance and then down at his hands in his lap. “Kanan,” he said finally.
“Oh,” Sam said, and that was totally inadequate and also way too much. She averted her gaze, accidentally caught Teal’c doing the same, his eyes on the floor in front of him like he was observing a moment of silence or waiting for someone to hit him, and that wasn’t good to see, either. The ghost memory twisted at the back of her head, and she lifted a hand to rub at it, just as the Colonel was doing the same, their elbows bumping. He flicked a look sidelong at her, a stiletto blade of warning and a taut wire of connection. When she dropped her hand, he raised his to his neck, fingers digging into the spaces between his vertebrae.
She watched his fingers grinding into his neck and the roaring seethed up in her ears like foam on boiling water. As noisy as it was in her head, the silence in the cell was heavy, the kind that dust settles in, disturbed only by the infrasound vibration of the distant crushers and the even thud of pacing Jaffa boots. Still on one knee, Teal’c was motionless except for his eyes, which followed the guard as he passed slowly back and forth outside the bars. When he was beginning his fifth circuit, Teal’c turned back to Sam and the Colonel and raised his eyebrow.
“Kind of lively for a stationary picket, don’t you think?” O’Neill said.
Sam mirrored Teal’c’s nod. “Not exactly palace guard, sir,” she said.
The speculative expression on the Colonel’s face faltered for just a second, and she knew that, like her, he was thinking of Teal’c back in the early days, standing motionless for all the hours of his watch at the doorway of their quarters on one of their first missions. Daniel had been observing him the entire time. He and Teal’c had spent the rest of the long night discussing Jaffa discipline and total commitment to assigned duties. Daniel had filled up half his field journal with notes.
“They remain agitated,” Teal’c said. “This could be exploited.”
Nodding, the Colonel watched the guard with eyes narrowed in thought.
“Goa’uld,” Sam said, as the idea began to form, still drifting and shadowy but coming clearer.
“What about them, besides the ‘they suck’?” O’Neill asked, without shifting his attention.
Again, Sam groped in her mind, waiting for the picture, the relationships to coalesce a little. After a moment, she gave it a shot. “The Jaffa and Sebek were obviously affected.”
“It must have been a severe disruption for the Goa’uld to risk leaving his host,” Teal’c added.
“Right, so the host is affected, too, like we all were.”
“Which means?” O’Neill made a ‘move along’ gesture with his good hand. Outside the cell, the Jaffa paused to gaze impassively at them, and the Colonel smiled tightly. “Still here. Thanks for checking.”
When the guard moved on again, Sam continued, “Well, there’s a common thread, isn’t there? We all experienced memories, or… well, something, anyway, that involved the Goa’uld. Jolinar, Sebek, Kanan. Why?” He gave her a “you’re asking me?” face, and she had to smile a little. “The point is, there’s something, I don’t know, directed about this disturbance. It’s not just the fumes or the gravity or the fact that we haven’t eaten in two days.”
“And the effects are alleviated now,” Teal’c said.
“Right. So it’s got to do with the mine. With what’s behind that door.”
“That door Daniel is going to be opening any minute now.” The Colonel looked at her steadily, and Sam shook her hea
d.
“If it were so easy, he’d already have done it.”
“Unless Daniel Jackson was stalling for time,” Teal’c said.
“Oh, he wasn’t stalling,” the Colonel said. “Lots of writing, nifty puzzle. Daniel was doing his best. You know it, I know it.” He leaned forward to look into the hallway again before letting his head fall back against the wall. “But Daniel figures everything out, eventually.”
Sam pictured Daniel’s hands, thought of him pressing the IDC and stepping through the Stargate and into the ’gate room, and of the look of relief that would be on the General’s face right before Sebek snapped his neck. Goosebumps rose on her arms; she shivered and rubbed her bare skin, pushing away the feeling. “If he can’t get into the mine, he still has one place he can go,” she said softly. “One code he does know.”
The Colonel turned his gaze toward the back wall, so she couldn’t see his face. After a long moment, he said, “We can’t let it get that far.”
Sam’s heart thudded in her chest. She’d thought about it before—after Jolinar’s death years ago, and again when the Colonel had been implanted by Hathor. She’d imagined the moment when she would have to kill her friends—quickly, to spare them the unending torture of possession by a Goa’uld. Her hands had been covered in the blood of friends before, but never like this. A part of her had believed it would never happen.
But they’d been lucky, and Daniel’s luck had apparently run out. After all his narrow escapes, all the times he’d been close to death and survived or come back from things even worse than death—to die at the hands of his friends…
Sam looked at the Colonel’s face, the thin line of his lips and the set of his jaw, and knew she would not be the one to deliver the fatal wound. She would bear the same guilt, though. There was no relief in it, for her.
“I do not believe Sebek wishes to separate himself from the technology inside the vault,” Teal’c said. “He could easily have left this world in the hands of his First Prime, but he has not.”
“No.” The Colonel’s fingers twitched in his lap. “He’s staying right here. Where we can get our hands on him.”
Sam flinched at the explicit reminder.
“We are vastly outnumbered. We will not be able to get close to him.” Teal’c’s voice was low and even, but Sam knew it was not that easy.
“We’ve been outnumbered since this started,” O’Neill said. “Nothing’s different now.”
“He may move on to someone else,” Sam suggested, a little desperate. The Colonel didn’t look at her.
Teal’c’s slight hesitation was more telling than the quietness of his voice. “And if he does, he will leave this host in the same condition as his previous host.”
“There’s always a chance, Teal’c,” she snapped. He inclined his head, deferring the argument. There was no point, and she was ashamed of herself the moment he looked away. “Teal’c,” she began, but just then the guard wheeled around in front of the door as another joined them.
“Move to the rear,” one of the Jaffa ordered, as he maneuvered into their space, holding a staff weapon on them. The end of the weapon bumped against the side wall. Slowly, Sam got to her feet and backed away, hands half-raised.
A young boy came stumbling into the cell, prodded along at the end of a staff weapon. His face was covered with dirt, and his clothes hung from his body like tatters from a scarecrow. Sam frowned; the bones of his wrists jutted out at sharp angles, and he looked as though he had not eaten well in a long time. One of the Jaffa shoved him hard enough to knock him down, and next to her, the Colonel tensed. He got up and took one step forward. “Leave the kid alone.”
“Mind your business, Tauri,” the Jaffa snarled, and raised the staff weapon a little higher, right to chest-level. The Colonel held up one hand, a gesture of understanding, but he was still rigid with anger. They watched as the guards threw the boy down against the wall, then backed away. “Do not speak to him,” the Jaffa ordered them. “He is none of your concern.”
“Right,” the Colonel said, and Sam knew without looking at him that he had no intention of following that command.
She didn’t, either.
It took a few minutes for the guard to resume his normal patrols, back and forth at five times the regular rate. As soon as it happened, Jack dropped to one knee and edged closer to the boy, who was curled against the wall, his head lowered onto his grubby arms.
“Hey,” O’Neill whispered. “Kid. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Refusing to look up, the boy shrank away as though he could dissolve into the brick.
“Sir. He has no reason to trust us.”
“Perceptive,” he replied. She gave him a look that should have withered his sarcasm, but she was off her game and the Colonel was focused on the boy.
“We are prisoners,” Teal’c said, “like you.”
The boy lifted his head and fixed Teal’c with a startling blue gaze full of hate. “You’re nothing like me.” He looked from Teal’c to the Colonel to Sam, but his expression never changed. No curiosity, no softness; just a blazing anger. “You want to trick me.” His eyes darted toward the shadow of the passing guard. “I’m not stupid, and I don’t have anything,” he protested, his voice cracking. He pressed his lips into a thin line.
Crouching next to the Colonel, Teal’c answered, “We want nothing from you.”
“You always want something,” the boy growled. “Jaffa take.”
“Not all Jaffa.”
The boy made a noise of disgust. He glared at the tattoo on Teal’c’s forehead, gathered a mouthful of spit and aimed it at Teal’c’s face.
“Hey!” the Colonel snapped. The boy’s head whipped around, and he stared at the Colonel without remorse, then looked away again.
Teal’c rose and wiped the spittle from his forehead with the back of his hand. He stared at it for a long moment, then said finally, “Do not admonish him, O’Neill. There are many who have the right to do as he has done.”
Sam shook her head wearily. “Teal’c, you can’t take the blame for all Jaffa everywhere in the galaxy.” She turned to the boy, whose brow was furrowed, for once something other than anger showing in his eyes. “We don’t want to trick you. And we don’t want to hurt you. We want to get out of here, just like you do. And Teal’c isn’t what you think.”
His eyes shifting from her to the Colonel to Teal’c, the boy leaned forward a little. “Teal’c?” he asked. His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits again.
“Yes,” Teal’c confirmed.
The Colonel hooked his thumb in Teal’c’s direction. “You know him?”
“Shol’va,” he answered, without the edge of derision the word usually carried. He shifted his gaze to O’Neill. “You’re SG-1, aren’t you?”
The Colonel let a thin smile warm his face a little. “Our reputation precedes us. I’m Jack. That’s Carter.”
“Where’s the other one?”
The smile faded. “He’s in the mine, with Sebek.”
For a moment the kid’s gaunt face held no expression at all, but slowly his mouth hardened and the anger was back. “He lied,” he said, finally, through clenched teeth.
“Who lied?” Sam asked.
“If you’re here, I should be free. He promised.”
“Sebek?”
He turned his blazing eyes on her. “My father.”
O’Neill raised an eyebrow in Sam’s direction. She stared at the kid as it all began to make sense—lies, truths, bits of information, all coalescing.
“You are the son of Aris Boch,” Teal’c stated, confirming out loud what Sam was thinking.
Other than dropping his head to his knees again, the boy made no reply.
“Wait a minute,” the Colonel objected. “The Tok’ra said he didn’t have a son.”
Sam could remember quite vividly the Colonel’s account of the conversation he’d had with the rescued Tok’ra and his grudging respect for Aris’ powers of manipulation.
Not that it had worked on them at the time, but Aris was good at spinning the occasional compelling yarn to get what he wanted.
“They lied,” Aris’ son answered, his voice muffled by his arms. “Everybody lies.”
It took the President half an hour to call Hammond back on the red phone, and when he did, he seemed entirely too patient. Too used to hearing that a member of SG-1 was missing; too confident things would work out fine. Hammond knew it wasn’t intentional. The man had been nothing but supportive of the program over the last years of his presidency. But that was coming to an end now, and SG-1 was the team with more than their share of close calls. If they weren’t so good at getting themselves out of the enormous trouble they got into, the President might have called back in five minutes. It didn’t really matter. Hammond already had his plan in place. Briefing the President was the smallest part of it.
Around three hours after SG-1’s report-back time had come and gone, Hammond had sent SG teams 14 and 17 after them, loaded to the gills with protective gear and heavily armed. He’d looked straight into Major Harper’s eyes and told him, “Find them, Major,” and Harper had nodded and stepped through the ’gate as though he had every confidence in the world that he could carry out those orders. There was no other way to go about it, or so Hammond had always believed. Fake it until you make it, Jack O’Neill would have said.
Harper’s recon squad was now just a shade over two minutes late.
Hammond had a comfortable chair for occasions just like this one, but he never actually slept in it. It was as if he had an innate ability that enabled him to keep his head on straight through the long hours, no matter how many days those hours stretched into. The coffee helped, too, Air Force dark, strong enough to hold the spoon upright when he stirred in his sugar. He pored over files, worked on overdue performance evaluations for his direct reports, went over inventory and requisition forms, cracked open budget files. Anything to keep him from composing letters of condolence in the back of his brain, tiny squares of white paper that loomed larger as the hours went on and were filled with lines of imaginary black scrawl. Last words, about the fallen. He hated everything about condolence letters, even the taste of the glue on the envelope flaps. The visceral memory plagued him.