by Stargate
Daniel thought about that for a moment. “Yes, but… the house brick is an accident. The electrode—that is personal. That’s someone doing it to you, deliberately. It has to make a difference. It can’t be seen as anything but an emotional experience.”
Jack shook his head. “Only if you let it. Don’t. Getting emotional about it means they win. What you do is forget there’s a person—or an alien—involved in the equation. You just stay focused on the physical sensation.”
“Which in this instance happens to be blinding agony,” he pointed out. “I don’t see how that helps me much.”
“It helps because it means you’re not focussing on the reason for the pain,” said Jack. “On why you’re there and the questions they’re asking. On your fears about whether or not you’ll break and tell them what they want to know. And anyway, that’s only step one. Step two is taking yourself out of the picture.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”
Jack’s expression was intent now. Lethally, ruthlessly serious. “You step outside the moment. Outside your body. The pain. So that it’s not happening to you, it’s happening to some other guy who looks like you. You just…” He opened his hands. “Go away.”
“Go away,” he repeated uneasily. “There’s a name for that, you know. Psychiatrists call it ‘depersonalisation disorder’.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what the shrinks call it, Daniel. You asked me how to handle being tortured, I’m telling you what I know. Take the advice, don’t take the advice, it’s entirely up to you.”
Daniel held up his hands. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—it’s just—I thought it’d be more complicated. How can it be so easy?”
Jack smiled. “Did I say it was easy, Daniel?”
“No,” he said, after a moment. “No, you didn’t.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What you are saying is it’s not about the body, it’s about the mind. Mental strength. Emotional endurance.”
Jack shrugged, then pulled a pained face. “Pretty much.”
Daniel sat in silence for a time, considering that. Jack’s advice was like an iceberg; nine-tenths of its truth lay beneath the surface of the words. He turned those words over and over in his mind, examining them for their hidden meaning. Applying rigorous academic analysis to their structure. Their subtext. What had been said without being verbalized.
At length, he stirred. “Jack… I don’t know if I’m strong enough. If I’ve got the emotional or physical endurance to do what you’re saying.”
Another shrug. Another wince. “Neither do I, Daniel,” Jack said simply. “Nobody knows—‘til they’re dancing with the guy holding the electrodes.”
“When you say ‘electrodes’… “ he said, feeling nervous. “You’re being literal, aren’t you?”
Jack just looked at him.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. Now there was a mental snapshot he could live without… Distraction, distraction, he needed a distraction. “Did you know torture has been used as a political tool throughout human history? Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Frances Walsingham, used it regularly to find out what the Catholics were up to. The Catholics were always—”
“Yeah,” said Jack, gazing at the ceiling. “This would be what I’m needing right now. A lecture on the history of torture.”
He subsided. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” Jack cocked his head. “Come here.”
“What?”
“Come here. And give me your hand.”
Baffled, he scooted closer. “Why?”
“For crying out loud, Daniel! Just give me your damned hand!”
Warily, Daniel extended his hand. Jack took it, cold fingers closing, thumb shifting as though it searched for something. It stopped. Stabbed. And a bolt of searing pain shot up and down his arm.
“Ow!” he shouted, outraged, and snatched himself free. “What the hell was that?” He rubbed at the slight discoloration on his wrist; he was going to have a bruise.
Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “The theoretical part of the lecture is over, Doctor. Time for the practical demonstration.”
“What practical demonstration? You didn’t say anything about a practical demonstration. I don’t want a practical demonstration!”
Jack looked at him. “Daniel, when you’re hanging blindfolded from a meat hook and your feet are chained to the floor for good measure, or they’ve strapped you down on a table, you can’t just pull yourself away. You’re stuck there and you’ve got two choices. Tell them, or don’t. And if it’s don’t, well… you’re in for an exciting time. It helps if you’re even a little bit prepared.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
Jack smiled. “It’s been rumored.”
Daniel sighed, and held out his hand again. “Okay. Okay. I take your point. This is what they do in the SAS, isn’t it? And the Green Berets and the Rangers and all the other Special Forces outfits. They give you a taste of the real thing so you can handle the three course meal, if you have to. Okay.” He tried to tame his ragged breathing. “Show me. Only don’t break my wrist or anything. I’m going to need it for when we’re rescued.”
Another smile, gently derisive this time. “You ready?”
“No. Not really.”
“Okay,” said Jack, and once more made a cold hard bracelet of his fingers. “Here we go.”
A callused thumb-tip, pressing on a nerve point. White hot pain flaring down his hand, up his arm. God, it hurt. The overwhelming urge to pull away, protect himself, make it stop.
“Don’t fight it, Daniel,” Jack’s voice advised him. “Just let it be. Breathe it in, and breathe it out. Don’t get involved with the pain. Don’t have a conversation with it. Just observe it. And then… step away. Step outside. You’re watching a movie. The sound’s down low and you’re a long way from the screen. Relax, Daniel. It doesn’t matter. It’s only pain.”
He was sweating now, and his heart-rate was in the red zone. He tried to relax. Tried not to care. Tried to breathe through it. Step outside himself. Be the observer. It doesn’t matter—it’s only pain. It’s only pain. It’s only pain.
He couldn’t do it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he panted, and pulled himself free. Cradled his bruised wrist in his unhurt hand and tried not to feel inadequate, and ashamed. “I can’t do that.”
Jack rested his head against the wall. “You might if you practised.”
He pulled a face. “I’d rather not.”
“It might be a good idea.”
“I’ll think about it.” Maybe. Curious, still cradling his wrist, he added, “How come you never showed me that before?”
Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “How come you never asked me to?”
Good question. And the answer was—was—because he was an archaeologist, not a Special Forces commando. He liked hieroglyphics and pyramids and ziggurats and cuneiform and yes… even alien kewpie dolls. He didn’t like to think about dark deeds done in secret. In the kind of training exercises that got people killed, or maimed, or the attitude that said those deaths and injuries were acceptable collateral damage. It smacked too much of the Goa’uld’s way of training for his comfort.
Jack said, “Daniel. Seriously. If you really want to know how to do that stuff I’ll hook you up with the right people when we get home. They’ll teach you better than I can.”
“It’s not the teacher that’s the problem,” he said wryly. “Jack—”
“Daniel?”
He tried for a devil-may-care smile and failed, miserably. “You realize if Heru’ur turns up with a Goa’uld symbiote or two, we’re screwed?”
That made Jack scowl, ferociously. “Daniel—”
“I’m just saying…”
“Well, don’t.”
By tacit consent they each retreated into silence and private contemplation. After a while, finally defeated by dread and morbid curiosity, Daniel roused.
“Ah… Jack? Look. Not trying to be pessimist
ic or anything but—well—I can’t help noticing there’s a lot of dried blood on the floor of this cell. Recently dried blood.”
Jack lifted his forehead from his bended knee. His face was drawn, his eyes dull. “It’s Leith’s. The Tok’ra operative you contacted. She killed herself.”
Daniel felt a stab of sorrow. She was nothing more to him than a hurried whisper, a promise of help in the dark, but even so… “You were here? You saw it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, didn’t you try to stop her, didn’t you—”
“Daniel.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Of course you did. So where is she now?”
Jack shrugged. “Who knows? They must’ve taken her body while I was outside getting roasted.”
Daniel considered the bloodstain, feeling queasy. “I don’t understand. All this blood. I thought they used a poison capsule to kill themselves. The Tok’ra Aris Boch captured, he had a—”
“Antipasto found it. So she found another way.”
This time Daniel didn’t correct the deliberate mistake. “What, she slashed her wrists? How could they put her in here with a knife, didn’t they search—”
“Not a knife,” said Jack. “I don’t know how she did it, exactly. But it looked like her snake self-destructed and took her with it.”
Daniel stared at the bloodstain on the floor, his imagination painting obscene pictures. “God.” He shivered. “And you really couldn’t stop her?”
“Daniel, she killed herself from the inside out. How exactly do you suggest I could’ve stopped her?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—of course you did everything you could. I just don’t understand—”
“Daniel, she was a snake,” said Jack. “That made her a head case, in every sense of the term.”
“Not a snake, Jack,” he said wearily. “A Tok’ra. There is a difference.”
“Trust me, not that much,” Jack retorted. “This Tok’ra was in half a mind—literally—to kill me first so I wouldn’t talk.”
Daniel frowned. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“And that’s different from you being prepared to let me suffer torture or die, even, to protect millions—how?”
Jack’s face stilled. “I don’t believe you’d want me to buy your life with the death of one person, let alone millions.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’d sacrifice yourself in a heartbeat if it meant saving someone else.”
“So would you.”
Jack stared. “Then why are we having this conversation?”
“I guess because I think we have more in common with the Tok’ra than you like to admit.”
“Daniel, you don’t get it,” said Jack, impatient. “If she’d killed herself because the situation was hopeless, fine. I’m on board with that. But she bailed before we got to that point. She wouldn’t even consider the possibility of rescue or escape. That’s just stupid. And short-sighted. And gutless. I’m telling you, I’ll never understand the damned Tok’ra.”
“I don’t know. You understand Jacob, don’t you?”
Jack grunted, and with some difficulty eased himself onto the floor. “Jacob’s different. Now can we please be quiet?”
“Sure. But you know…”
“What?”
Daniel nodded at the bloodstain. “I was just thinking. Probably the details of how Leith died aren’t something Sam needs to read in your report.”
Jack’s expression softened. “Yeah. Probably you’re right.”
Yes. He was right. The last thing Sam needed was another reason to worry about her father and his insane risk-taking on behalf of the Tok’ra. The close call on Ne’tu had left her silent and pretending, as she so often pretended, that she was a big tough military commando who never got rattled by anything. The last thing she needed was her imagination running riot over images of a Tok’ra symbiote self-destructing and taking its helpless host with it.
Of course, for her to read Jack’s mission report he’d have to write it first. And to write it he’d have to be somewhere that wasn’t an escape-proof prison cell in a heavily guarded Goa’uld fortress…
Come on, Daniel. Think positive. We’re going to get out of here. They won’t leave us behind.
As far as he could tell, Jack was now sleeping. Daniel closed his eyes and tried to follow suit.
Jacob looked at High Councillor Per’sus’s face on the Vorash comm room’s viewscreen and thought, God help me but I’m starting to agree with Jack. The Tok’ra need a great big kick in the butt.
“Forgive me, High Councillor,” he said, temper barely restrained, “but you’re making a mistake.”
“Per’sus,” said Selmak sternly. “You know we have to do this. Morally and politically, the Tok’ra have no choice.”
“The humans are probably compromised by now,” Per’sus objected. “Our focus should be on evacuating Vorash.”
Let me talk to him again, Jacob demanded. Selmak sighed, and relinquished control.
Jacob leaned close to the viewscreen and lowered his voice to his best ‘pissed off General’ growl. “Per’sus, if Jack or Daniel had given us up the base would be crawling with Heru’ur’s Jaffa by now. It’s not. In fact, Heru’ur hasn’t even left for Anatapas’s fortress. He’s still going hammer and tongs with Cronos. Which means either Jack and Daniel’s presence remains a secret or Heru’ur has put interrogating them on hold until he’s finished his latest skirmish.”
Per’sus didn’t look too happy about being growled at. Tough. “Or,” he said sharply, “he has instructed Anatapas to conduct the interrogation for him. If that is so, compromise is merely a matter of time. Has there been further contact from Leith?”
Jacob shook his head, trying to ignore a stab of anxiety. “No. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There’s absolutely no reason to assume—”
“That she is dead?” Per’sus looked away for a moment; despite his anger, Jacob felt for him. The Tok’ra were too few, so precious. For Per’sus, the idea of losing another of their people was a special kind of agony. “I know. But if she is discovered, Jacob, you know what will happen.”
“Yes. Which is all the more reason for us to get off our fat asses and mount a rescue mission pronto,” he retorted. “O’Neill’s capable of holding out under torture—maybe Jackson is, too. I don’t know. But if they’re implanted with a Goa’uld symbiote then it’s over, red rover. Per’sus, we have to act now. Before things go from bad to disastrous, for us and the SGC.”
“Jacob—”
“No. You listen to me, Per’sus. George Hammond crawled a long way out on a very shaky limb for us. And now his people are in harm’s way because of it and I’ll be damned if we leave them there!”
Per’sus frowned. “That is human thinking, Jacob. The Tok’ra are not human.”
He felt like reaching through the view screen and shaking Per’sus till his teeth rattled. “High Councillor, do you want the Earth treaty or don’t you? Because I’m telling you, as your resident Earth expert, refusing to participate in a rescue mission will be like blowing up the White House then wondering if we can still be friends. It will never happen.”
Per’sus looked away, his expression fretful. “That is a risk I am prepared to take.”
Jacob took a deep, sharp breath. “I’m not. If the Tok’ra won’t help, I walk.”
Shocked, Per’sus stared at him. “Selmak would not permit that.”
“Selmak would open the door, my friend,” said Selmak.
Now Per’sus looked furious. “I am High Councillor of the Tok’ra! I will not be coerced in this fashion!” He got up from his chair and walked away from the view screen. The sound of his angry footsteps, pacing his undisclosed location, echoed his displeasure.
Oh dear, said Selmak, unrepentant. I think we’ve upset him.
I’m sorry, said Jacob. But it can’t be helped.
He’s going to say you’ve been a bad influence on me.
> Is he right?
Softly, Selmak chuckled. Probably.
Per’sus returned. “You disappoint me, Selmak. You have allowed your host to affect your good judgement.” Out of sight, his fingers drummed on a hard flat surface. “I authorise the release of Tok’ra intelligence on the fortress of Anatapas and the loan of a tel’tac. But I will not endanger Tok’ra lives to rescue the Tauri.”
“Not good enough,” said Jacob flatly. “When Martouf asked Jack and Daniel to help him rescue me and Selmak from Ne’tu they didn’t think twice. They are my friends, and our allies. I’m sorry, High Councillor, but I can’t walk away from them.”
“Yet you can walk away from us?”
“Not without bitter regret and genuine sorrow.”
Per’sus fell silent for a moment, then nodded. “Martouf can accompany you. Take no foolish chances. Selmak, I give you this clear directive: avoid getting killed.”
Selmak nodded. “That is our aim, High Councillor.”
“Bring the Tauri home unharmed,” said Per’sus. “I am not unmindful of the debt we owe them.”
Jacob bowed his head. “Thank you, High Councillor. You won’t regret this decision.”
“Let us hope not, Jacob. Contact me immediately upon your return.”
Per’sus severed their connection. Wrung out, startled to find he was actually shaking, Jacob left the small Vorash base communications room to find Martouf waiting in the corridor outside.
“Per’sus has agreed to our involvement?”
“Yes,” said Jacob, and clapped Martouf on the shoulder. “So let’s get going, shall we? It’s showtime.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sam stood at the base of the SGC ’gate ramp and looked at the assembled personnel looking back at her. Some of them she knew well, some not so well at all. Some she’d trained. A couple she’d recruited. Some she was fond of. Some she didn’t like particularly… and knew the feeling was mutual.