by Jamie Duncan
He grinned as he hefted the weapon, then looked up and down the hallway. “I know a better way out,” he said, and pointed through the guardroom door. “That way.”
“Okay,” Sam agreed, and took point, Aadi behind her, and Teal’c on their six.
When she was at the door on the far side, a double burst of zat fire startled her. She turned in time to see the second guard’s body disintegrate with a last blurring ripple. Aadi was standing with the zat still aimed at empty space, and his face was alight with feverish triumph.
“He wasn’t a threat. You didn’t need to do that,” she snapped. Teal’c confiscated Aadi’s zat and stuffed it into his waistband.
“One less Jaffa,” Aadi said, his smile wide and defiant.
On the journey through the winding corridors, Aris was careful not to let O’Neill get too close. He had the upper hand and the advantage of having a plan, but O’Neill had a score to settle. Of all the things Aris had observed about O’Neill, his loyalty to his team, and theirs to him, was the most admirable. It was also the most likely to get Aris killed, now that Sebek had changed the game by taking Jackson as a host. He would have to stay constantly on his guard. With the rest of his team held as ransom to his cooperation, O’Neill might start to think there wasn’t much left to lose. Aris couldn’t let that thought take hold.
There was plenty to admire about O’Neill, but all those things made him dangerous. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the plan. It had taken Aris too long, and he’d sacrificed too much, to get careless now.
The Jaffa followed them out of the bunker, making conversation impossible. O’Neill seemed unconcerned on the surface, but his sharp eyes took everything in, and Aris was certain he was making maps and catalogs of useful items in his head for future reference. It was what Aris would do, in the same situation. Near the exit, where the poisonous atmosphere the Goa’uld had given them was palpable, Aris waved a hand at them. “Sebek wants me to bring him alone.”
The Jaffa exchanged glances. These were the dregs of Yu’s army: old men whose time as warriors was coming to a close, young men disgraced in battle, and a few of the injured or crippled whose symbiotes couldn’t make them completely right again. Aris had sized up their capabilities long ago—the same batch of castoffs had been here since Sebek’s arrival—but he watched O’Neill make the same assessment, and knew he saw their weakness.
“Sebek has given me no such order,” Na’tak said. He was the most unpleasant of the entire cadre. Aris had been looking forward to wringing his neck for a very long time.
“Your lord and master is not himself,” Aris said, with a wry smile. The limp joke earned him a stone-faced stare from O’Neill. Aris made a note not to press that wound too hard, “I brought them here in the first place, remember? I think I can walk him to the mine.”
“Very well,” Na’tak said, doing exactly the wrong thing, as Aris had known he would. “But you are warned, hunter. Be quick.”
Aris resisted the urge to shoot them both. It wouldn’t be productive. “Oh, very quick,” he said, unable to keep the amused scorn out of his voice. “We’ll run all the way.”
O’Neill watched them turn and go about their business, in opposite directions. Water leaked from his eyes—not tears, Aris knew, but a reaction to the fumes. It happened to all offworlders. Even the Jaffa were not immune to the poison from the mines. When the sound of the Jaffa’s footsteps had faded, O’Neill turned back to Aris, waiting. “So,” he said.
“You want to know what I passed to Teal’c, don’t you?” Aris said. O’Neill’s expression shifted subtly to curiosity, with a quick flash of surprise. Good. If Aris could keep him off guard, he’d have a better chance of keeping them all alive long enough to be of use.
“Like anything you say would be even close to the truth,” O’Neill said. He rubbed his hands over his face and eyes, an irritated gesture, sweeping moisture away.
“That won’t help,” Aris said. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Not that we’ll be here that long,” O’Neill said, challenging Aris to contradict him. Aris didn’t bother.
“I gave Teal’c a little something to make his stay shorter,” Aris said. He waited for the expected reaction to play itself out, while O’Neill worked through his motivations, looking for the angle.
“So he can help your son,” O’Neill said.
Aris inclined his head, let a small smile curve across his lips. “Let’s hope the Jaffa were a little slower to pick it up than you were. Your people will need it, when the time comes.”
“Uh-huh,” O’Neill said, as skeptical as if someone had told him he was free to take his team and walk off this world forever. “And why isn’t that time now?”
“That’s not your concern.”
O’Neill tensed. “Listen. Not to put too fine a point on this, but we don’t have a lot of options here. And if you’re trading us off for your kid, you’d better think twice about that. This snake is not going to let your kid go.”
Aris kept his face neutral, but the words registered hard with him, confirmation of his own instincts. It didn’t matter, though. The situation was as untenable as it had been even before he’d known for sure Sebek wasn’t a fair trader. He unholstered his weapon, but let his arm drop to his side without pointing it at O’Neill. Subtle threats and intimidation wouldn’t work on this man, but they had mutual experience of each other, and each had seen proof that the other would do whatever was necessary to gain the upper hand. He triggered the door and let it slide open so the planet’s atmosphere could rise to meet them. He hated the sight of his planet now. His son’s legacy, if he survived any of what was to come. The Goa’uld had a lot to pay for.
“Let me make it clear for you, Colonel. You’re a means to an end. You will help me appease Sebek so I can get into that vault, and I’ll free your friends.”
“So they can free your son, and get themselves killed in the process,” O’Neill said.
“Everything comes with a price,” Aris said. Too close to the wound, again. Anger flashed in O’Neill’s eyes, tamped down in the space of a heartbeat. O’Neill would never trust him. He was too smart to make that mistake.
“You think you know what’s in that vault, don’t you?” O’Neill was watching him, a little too closely. He was more perceptive than Aris had given him credit for.
“Sebek’s not the only one who can benefit from what’s down there. In case you hadn’t noticed, something down there doesn’t agree with the Goa’uld. If it hurts them, it has value to me.” There it was—the spark of interest, in O’Neill’s eyes. Now the groundwork for cooperation was laid. “My people have been enslaved by the Goa’uld for a long time, Colonel. What would you do, if this was your world?”
“You don’t do subtle very well,” O’Neill said impatiently. Blatant manipulation apparently had little effect on him. Not that Aris had expected anything else. “You know damn well what I’d do.”
“Then we understand each other,” Aris said. O’Neill didn’t respond, but he would follow the path to its logical conclusion: if whatever was down there harmed the Goa’uld, it was worth finding. Who would ultimately use it against the Goa’uld, though… well, that was a question that would be answered later. Aris was going to make sure it was him. O’Neill would do the same. But Aris had a blaster and hostages. O’Neill’s friends would have his son and a sense of duty and decency that meant they wouldn’t use him against his father.
Aris smiled. He dug down into the breast pocket of his armor and withdrew Jackson’s cracked glasses. “Take them,” he said to O’Neill. “Sebek’s too weak to heal Jackson’s eyes, so he can’t see very well. He might need these.”
“ffe might?” O’Neill said, without moving to pick up the glasses. Any minute he was going to make a move to kill Aris; Aris could see it in his eyes.
“Dr. Jackson,” Aris amended. “Sebek is weak. We can use that.” He waited for O’Neill to accept the temporary treaty implicit in “we”, and t
he peace offering, such as it was.
O’Neill took the glasses from Aris’ hand and shoved them in his front pocket.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The only thing worse than the stench of the planet’s air was the stink of the mine—a wet, dank smell, like a hundred years’ worth of mildew and rot trapped in the stifling darkness, and it made Jack sneeze. The irony wasn’t lost on him; too bad Daniel wasn’t there to rag him about it.
This time, as they descended into the mine, Jack went ahead with Aris right behind him. Jack counted his steps to focus his thinking; three hundred and seventy-seven steps, jagging ever downward in circular paths, through dimly lit passages and narrow, rough-hewn doorways. All the while, he steeled himself for dealing with Daniel… Sebek. He had to stop thinking of him as Daniel, or he would never be able to do what he had to do.
By the time they reached the vault chamber, he’d sealed every trace of worry and fear behind a wall of sarcastic indifference. All that remained was disgust and anger, because those might still come in handy. If things got too bad, if he lost control of the situation, he could always provoke the snake into killing him. Words were a handy weapon in the face of arrogance; smart remarks never failed to send most Goa’uld into a killing rage. Jack had always known insolence would serve a purpose one day.
They found Sebek standing in front of the vault doors, his face inches away from the surface as he ran both palms over the inscriptions. Such a familiar posture, one Jack had seen Daniel assume a thousand times when he was a hair’s breadth away from working out a problem—but Jack had already slammed that door closed. Sebek might look like Daniel, he might even do the things Daniel had done once, but Daniel was as good as dead while that thing had control of him. Jack could imagine all too easily what it was like to move through the world without conscious thought, without control of his limbs or his voice, or even his memories and dreams. He could only hope Daniel was as unaware of the horror of it as Jack had been while Kanan was dragging him around the galaxy in search of a captive slave girl.
Even so, when Sebek turned to them, Jack caught himself searching for remnants of his friend. He couldn’t help it; it was what he wanted to see, and he looked in spite of himself, careful not to give his intention away. Instead of Daniel’s intense look of concentration, and the easy smile that usually followed it, he saw a creature staring out at him through Daniel’s blue eyes, a calculating gaze that erased any lingering hope. Not that he’d expected anything different. In an awful way, it made things easier.
Sebek had stripped down to Daniel’s military-issue black t-shirt and BDUs, and it was a jarring dissonance of the recognizable and the strange. Jack wished the snake had done something to make himself look less Daniel-like—changed into one of those wacky Goa’uld outfits, maybe—because seeing him wearing Daniel like a suit of clothes was unnerving. The only thing that made him not-Daniel, on the surface, was the tilt of his head, or the curving sneer that passed for a smile. That, and the ribbon device he wore on his right hand.
Sebek spoke first to Aris, ignoring Jack entirely. The sound of his voice was Daniel’s voice, roughened and deepened, warped by Sebek’s presence, but Jack could still hear Daniel beneath, if he let himself listen. “You will remain with us.”
Aris looked steadily at him, as if trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to obey, then said, “I have business to do on your behalf. You don’t need me here.”
“You will do as we command!” Sebek shouted. Aris holstered his weapon and folded his arms across his chest, but he made no move to leave; it passed for obedience.
As soon as Sebek’s miniature tantrum passed, it was as though Aris no longer existed. Sebek turned to Jack with a calculating stare, much as he had assessed him when he’d first seen him the day before—but this was different from before; he looked at Jack like he knew him, which made the hair stand up on Jack’s arms. Of course, Sebek now had access to all Daniel’s information, which was what scared Jack all the way around. There were a few things Daniel knew about Jack he’d prefer no snake ever find out, too many sore points like fresh, hidden bruises, waiting for someone to jam a finger into the right spot.
“You are the one called O’Neill,” Sebek said, raising his chin and narrowing his eyes.
“We’ve met,” Jack said, conscious of Aris moving away from him. He braced himself.
“Ah, but we have learned much more about you since our first encounter,” Sebek said. He smiled, a twist of Daniel’s lips that profaned the expression. “We have our host’s memories to draw upon, and he has been most helpful in teaching us about you.”
Jack could feel his jaw tighten. He clamped down on the denials he was about to spew. Too soon in this game to get ribboned to a crisp, so he shifted his gaze away from Sebek and toward a neutral corner of the room, but Sebek was already in motion. He moved closer to Jack, closer still, until his chest touched Jack’s arm. A shiver of revulsion started at the base of Jack’s spine, but he resisted the urge to pull away. Slowly, Sebek moved around him in a tight circle, behind Jack, then coming around to face him. “You are a great leader among the Tauri,” Sebek said. “What a pitiful statement upon their armies, if you are the best they can produce.”
“Oh, we do okay,” Jack said, and forced his tone of voice into neutral.
“We could not think of a reason not to kill you,” Sebek informed him, in a conspiratorial whisper. “We were looking forward to it. First you, then the woman, and the shol’va last—a special kind of death, for him. Something lingering. Something befitting a traitor.”
“Time’s a’wastin’,” Jack said, and met Sebek’s eyes with a calm born of long practice. “Or were you planning to talk me to death? ’Cause I’ve got to tell you, it’s not very efficient.”
“Our plans have changed. This one thinks you can be useful to us,” Sebek said, tapping his belly, as if Daniel was the snake coiled inside. “He thinks you should be allowed to live.”
“I thought nothing of the host survives,” Jack said blandly, though a devastating certainty rose inside him: Daniel probably did want Jack to live, but he hadn’t given that thought up willingly. The snake was in there, burrowing around inside Daniel, stealing everything that mattered to him. “Or have you finally given up on that old schtick?”
“Nothing important survives,” Sebek said. “We take what we wish, when we wish to take it. It is unfortunate that you were not privileged to understand this for yourself, as your previous experiences as a host were sadly interrupted.”
Jack straightened. This was what he’d hoped wouldn’t happen: a snake who knew just where his wounds were, and how to apply maximum pressure. “A Tok’ra isn’t a Goa’uld,” Jack said, without any conviction whatsoever. Damn, even after all these years, he still didn’t quite believe it. With Sebek less than a foot from his face, staring at him for any sign of a reaction, he couldn’t sell it.
Sebek tilted his head, eyes narrowed again. “They are traitors, true, but they were once as we are. They refuse to wield the power that is their birthright.” His gaze traveled significantly to Jack’s neck, to his throat, then back to Jack’s eyes. “But you were host to another, before Kanan.”
Hard to forget that experience; Hathor’s face loomed in his mind’s eye, and her fist, with the mature symbiote squirming and screaming, waiting to dive right into him. His skin was crawling now, like a thousand ants marching over his body. “Right, that. But it didn’t take,” Jack said. He smiled self-deprecatingly. “I’m snake-resistant.”
“Insolence,” Sebek purred, though he didn’t sound displeased. He sounded like a cat about to eat a mouse he’d been batting around for hours. “But you have something we must have.” He reached up one hand and drew a line across Jack’s forehead with his index finger; the touch was like acid. “You have stored the knowledge of the Ancients in your mind. We would not believe such a thing, were it not for our host’s certainty that this is true.”
“Daniel exaggerates,” Jack sa
id, and felt like a jerk for saying it, but it wasn’t like Daniel was in a position to care about slurs to his character.
“No,” Sebek said. “He does not. He cannot. His thoughts are open to us; he cannot hide them.” Shoulder to shoulder with Jack, Sebek pointed at the vault door, then lowered his voice to say, “You will use this knowledge to open this vault for us.”
“That’s your big plan?” Jack said, incredulous. “Listen, if you really know what Daniel knows, then you know I don’t know as much as you think I know.” He paused for effect. “Or something like that.”
“Your attempts to confuse the issue are not amusing to us,” Sebek said. “You remember the language you learned, do you not? You have activated these devices before by your presence.”
“No, I haven’t,” Jack said. There was a tiny fragment of memory pushing at the back of his head, a conversation with Daniel where Daniel had gone on and on about his theory that Jack was the one who activated the Ancient repository by stepping through the circle on the floor or some such nonsense. Daniel had even insisted that he was sure Jack remembered some of the Ancient he had learned, and the accompanying Latin, but Jack was quick to squash that notion, even though he really did remember a thing or two, or ten. Jack hadn’t been listening closely enough when Daniel went on about the why and the how of activating the Ancient devices. It was all geek-speak to him, but now it appeared Daniel hadn’t let go of that theory. Unfortunately for Jack. He hoped none of it had been right, because if it was, he was in a world of hurt.
“We shall soon discover the truth of the matter,” Sebek said. “You are untainted by a Goa’uld presence. You do not possess the marker.”
“Whatever,” Jack muttered. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Find another volunteer.”