Not The Nine O'Clock Nightmare
Maude's fingers brushed across two of the tiny, archaic, enameled felines on the necklet, lighting for just a moment on their tiny crossed eyes. She paused, disconcerted. Just for a moment, less than a moment, she would have sworn that - they glowed.
~oOo~
La Selle Salzmann Inn, Colorado Springs, Room 317, 11.34 pm
"Larabee."
Chris, who in the name of all that's inexcusable is that horrifying message on your cellphone meant to -?
"It's meant to stop late night phone calls I don't wanna deal with, Ez. C'mon, it's near midnight, tell me your call won't fit my definition of that."
I cannot tell a falsehood - at least, I can with far more proficiency than most, as you would agree, but I do hesitate to do so to you, so...
"Maude wasn't there, was she?"
Au contraire, Mother proved disconcertingly predictable, and both she and her evidently ill-gotten gains were at the hotel I predicted. Please note the operative word being was. Mother has departed, denying to the last any less than impeccably lawful deed or thought, and the objects that the pygalgic military making our lives miserable are in my possession.
"That's good."
Possibly. Chris, I have not the faintest idea what the execrableAir Force minions would want with the most hideous set of dubiously authentic antiquities it has ever been my misfortune to...
{silence}
"Ezra?"
Chris, I'm not sure what is going on, but I'm looking at the window and there appears to be - something - or somethings - trying to get in.
"Somethings? What the fuck -"
Hideous somethings. If this is those military buffoons' idea of a joke or a pathetic attempt to intimidate, I will not be responsible for -
"For what?"
Oh... oh my dear sainted - now that's just plain ridiculous, they look like -
"What? I'm heading your way, just hold on and tell me - what?"
Some sort of animal, feline and shaped - like -
{smash}
"Ez, was that the window?"
Chri-!
{thump}
"Ezra! What the fuck is going on -? EZRA!"
~oOo~
Cheyenne Mountain, 4 hours earlier
It had hardly been the news story of the month - week - half-hour, to be honest, except to Stargate Command's resident Egyptologist with his indefatigable fascination for crazy Egyptology stories.
But it meant that trying to persuade said resident Egyptologist to clock off, sign out, go home and get a life was a pointless exercise, and O'Neill knew it, but as a good and dutiful team leader, he sometimes did feel the need to at least try. Just so that he could tell the General and the medical staff - all of whom thought said Egyptologist needed to clock off etcetera more often - that he had tried.
He sighed, and wondered if Preventing the End Of The World As They Knew It Yet Again And In Whatever Unimaginable Way Daniel And Carter Imagined This Time was really worth it sometimes. At least once the world ended, Daniel and Carter might stop talking at him.
No. He wasn't to think that way. And anyway, Daniel and Carter probably wouldn't stop anyway, not even if they did die. Jack winced at that thought and reinforced his best 'I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm interested' look as Daniel steered this last-minute meeting into even more surreal mental shoals than usual. It was just another step - or stumble, more like - in their search for the ugly '8th Dynasty or earlier' pectoral and bracelets that - by sheer coincidence - were Goa'uld, were missing and were due to explode and take half the country with it any day, week, month... century now.
Daniel bounced slightly as he made the announcement. "There was a theft of mummified cats at the Brooklyn Museum last night."
The deafening silence was all that he was far too accustomed to, and the blank faces turned to him were... depressingly normal.
"I'm sure you can see the connection here," he added, ever hopeful. "It could be very significant."
"Connection with -?" Hammond prompted patiently, not showing for one minute that he had also been planning to sign out and go home, for once only three or four hours late. The General did have a life, even if his job, his teams and his scientists kept shortening it.
Daniel heroically held in the sigh. "The Mafdet antiquities, sir -?"
"Maude de Something-or-other and her amazing explosive jewelry, sir," O'Neill said, unthinkingly helpful. From the less than amused look Hammond gave him, he really did have to work more on when to leave being helpful to his teammates, especially the annoyingly uncrushable unmilitary one. "Curse of the Missing..." So okay, hewasn't himself all that crushable either but damn it, they were living yet another bad B-movie, for Chrissake! "You did say Cat Mummies?"
"Mummified Egyptian cats, yes." Daniel held up a large, glossy and very detailed picture, and every single tough, hard, experienced military officer there flinched. Even Hammond.
"Creepy," Major Warren murmured just sotto voce enough for the General - who agreed - to ignore him. "Creeper than a dead snaky alien, if you ask me."
Daniel blinked at him. "They were extremely quite common in Egypt, Major, and many gods were honored by them." O'Neill stifled a groan, and saw several of his fellow offers do the same: they all had learned the signs of a full archeological lecture in the offing.
"The missing mummies," Daniel held up another picture, eyes alight with the joy of old, dead things, "were in storage, not on display; they're authentically old, presumably of the right period, but they apparently poor quality both from a historical and an artistic point of view, wholly undistinguished apart from their age."
"Like Mafdet's necklace," Carter said brightly.
"Exactly. They therefore hadn't been properly studied, at least not in recent times. But if you look here," he pointed out helpfully, "this symbol," his finger hovered on the creepy dead-eyed painted cat face, "was on the pectoral and is a symbol for the goddess Mafdet."
"Sweet," Jack deadpanned.
"And is Goa'uld."
"Even sweeter."
Hammond gave him another look. "So you believe that Maude Standish - or de Saussure - or the ATF agent Ezra Standish - or Simpson - may be involved in the theft?"
"Ummm, no."
"Why not, Doctor?" Hammond wanted to know.
"Yes, why not, Daniel?" O'Neill, along with Carter, Makepeace and the rest of SG3 also clearly wanted to know. It made perfect sense, after all.
Or not. "The police are treating it as an internal matter," Daniel said, studying the paper before him. "They think one or more of the museum staff must be involved. Because there was no break-in."
Everyone stared at him for a minute.
Jack spoke carefully. "What?"
"There was no break-in. In fact," Daniel bounced again, just slightly, at the very idea, "all reports indicate that the mummies... broke out."
~oOo~
La Selle Salzmann Inn, Colorado Springs, Room 317, 12.08 pm
The darkened hotel room looked like a mob of enraged zombies has had a standup battle in it: the furniture wrecked, the bedclothes shredded and bloodied, glass from the shattered windows everywhere...
And yes, the... things scattered around did look like small feline zombies made of ragged, blackened linen. And they still seemed to be trying to jerk, however brokenly and feebly, towards what remained of the bed and the man on it, braced as tightly against the bed head as he could manage.
Ezra grimaced, wiped blood from his face with the back of one hand, and used his tiny sleeve pistol to put another bullet into the nearest of them. Then a second, just for the hell of it.
"My thanks for the assistance, Mister Larabee," he said faintly, as Chris obligingly shot the others to smithereens from the doorway.
"I'd say you were doin' okay against them, Ezra," Chris drawled. "That arsenal you like to lug around comes in handy sometimes."
"Pure pragmatism." Ezra's voice regained some of its easy drawl, however tattered. "And I do believe I've almost depleted it. The cost of reimbursement -"
"Yeah yeah, I can imagine. Y'okay?"
"Not even slightly, I fear. What in the name of all unholy are those abominations - Chris!" His gun jerked up and fired again, and the most undead of the lot - which had been levering up behind Chris - gave what sounded like an infernal if mechanical meow and toppled back over. "I am astonished the manager of this benighted establishment hasn't appeared to forcibly eject us - where is he?"
"Don't know, don't care. Likely he's hiding, given the unholy din you and your... whatever they are were making."
"My -?"
"Okay, Maude's. I don't think he even saw me take the stairs, but I'm damn sure he'll have called the cops by now. So where are they?"
Ezra drew the necklet - as ugly as ever, with its tiny deformed gilt cats and their crossed, and now clearly, malevolently glowing eyes - and the matching armbands from his pocket. "Much as it pains me to say it," he spoke shakily, holding them out with not even the usual show of reluctance, "ah cannot even begin to see what Mother saw in them."
"'Less she expected to sell them as the real thing."
"Ahh, yes. That would be all too like her."
"Statin' the obvious here, but real Egyptian relics aren't that inclined to glow in the damn dark, Ez." Chris paused, staring down at one of the bullet-ridden zombie-things and trying to decide if he'd seen it twitch. He didn't think so, but put another bullet in it for good measure. "Or attract... whatever they are."
"True enough. But forgeries are seldom intentionally so hideous as to deter the mark... I mean, of course, the intelligent purchaser." Ezra shook his head. "My apologies Chris, I fear even such a brief re-acquaintance and Mother is her customary bad influence on me."
Chris gave him the usual flat stare.
He sometimes felt for Standish, caught between the rocks that were his team members and the law, and the hard place that was his beloved but less than law-abiding mother, but right now he chose not to touch on it. To be honest, he sometimes felt rather more for the team, the law, the mother, and fuck it all, himself, when having to deal with what Standish got up to when caught between them all.
"I want to talk to those Air Force folk," he went on. "This all started when they crashed our operation looking for her. I'd say they know what the hell is going on, or at least know more than we damn well do."
"Undoubtedly." Ezra raised an eyebrow. "But if I recall your fulminations on the subject, the officer in charge was depressingly fond of the term 'need to know', was he not?" A slight, tight smile touched his lips. "Almost as enamored of said excuse as you are when you wish to be."
Chris narrowed his eyes, unamused.
"I'm just pointing out, Mister Larabee, that -"
"He didn't think the ATF needed to know. Well, the need has just fuckin' expanded, and that means you and I need if no one else does." Larabee's view of other Governmental Powers That Were had always been that they could do as he said, not as he did, and his whole team was all too aware that he had never seen the lapse of logic there, or that claiming turnabout might be unfair play wouldn't work.
Which, Ezra reminded himself, was why it so often did work.
"You know that the local constabulary will not be pleased with us for decamping like this, to say nothing of the hotel management."
"So they can complain to... hell, I dunno. The room's in one of Maude's names, I take it?"
"Well... more or less."
Chris took that as considerably less. "Don't want my name, or anyof yours, involved yet, not on the ground level, not till I know what you're involved with and how big a bitch it's gonna be to explain to Head Office."
"...As if it isn't already?"
"Or if it'll put the operation or you at risk, Ezra. And yeah, I know deserting a crime scene ain't the proper and legal thing for federal agents to do, so don't bother tellin' me, Standish. This is getting way more out of hand than I'm prepared to put up with, so we'll just have a little talk with whichever of the Air Force people who started this whole debacle we can find, get them off your back and outa our case, get this Egyptian junk back to the guy who's supposed to own it, an' let someone who's being fuckin' paid to deal with any scientifically-impossible-or-otherwise fallout... deal with it."
"A plan after my own heart, I must say."
"So let's get out of here." Chris took the ill-gotten antiquities that had caused the whole mess from his agent's hands and stuffing them in his own pockets.
"Should we take the things, or what remains of them,with us?" Ezra stared around at the feline zombie remnants; between them, he and his Fearless - And Inclined To Excess When Fractious - Leader had left them in antiquated, somewhat disgusting, bullet-ridden fragments all over the floor. He shuddered. "I would really, infinitely, rather not, Chris..."
"So we'll take a few bits for -"
"I warn you, if you suggest 'souvenirs' I will not be responsible for -"
"- Josiah and JD to research. Put them in that box Maude's doodads came in, I'm keepin' them with me for the minute."
"Is that wise?'
"Mebbe not. Hell, if need be I can put a coupla bullets through them as well, an' let you spin the tale to the owner that it was self-defense."
"Too kind, Mister Larabee."
"Josiah's already hankering for a look at them, says he knows a bit about antiquities, but I reckon he's just curious about how Maude got herself - or rather, got you - into this mess. The rest of this business can be kicked upstairs to the ADC once we get home and he can deal with the locals on his version of a need to know basis."
"You won't do the honors yourself?"
"Local Powers That Be don't always like me much." Chris's grin widened a fraction.
"By which you mean they fear you mightily." Ezra rolled his eyes as he carefully scraped up a handful of ancient cat and bandage fragments with the corner of the coverlet, and gingerly dropped them into the box. For once, he missed something as something small, flat, black and made of leather slipped off and just under the bed, but to be fair, it would not have struck him as anything his mother, or any Standish, would be seen possessing.
"That too. Travis can handle them, and they can handle the shitwork on this mess while you and I start by finding and questioning this Doctor... Daniel Whatever. Diplomatically. Tact and diplomacy's your thing, as you keep telling us."
"Ahh, if you recall -"
"Oh yeah, he only knows you as that two-bit crook Simpson." Chris frowned. "Damn nuisance that. Okay, I'll go alone." The expressive silence that that got made him scowl. "I can be tactful, Standish."
"Of course you can, Mister Larabee."
"And diplomatic."
"No dispute on that score."
"And persuasive."
"That I have never doubted."
"And it's gonna put a crimp in the whole day if I have to shoot you, so cut it out." Another, equally expressive silence made him grin again. "Okay, I'll take one of the boys to run interference." In the distance, he could hear sirens. "Now let's get out of here."
"Both excellent ideas." Ezra stood, wincing a little. "Just one more thing, Chris..."
"Damn it, Standish - now what?"
Ezra have a theatrical sigh and gazed around at the unholy mess. "This is not going on my expense account, is it?"
~oOo~
La Selle Salzmann Inn, Colorado Springs, Room 317, 12.45 pm
"You let them go?" The stolid police officer who had the unenviable job of writing this up gazed around at the deserted room and the chaos of body-and-fabric bits, broken bed and many many bullets, and decided that it would take someone senior. "Didn't even get their names?"
The manager refrained from repeating what the downright scary blonde guy had said as he was going into the room, and from admitting he had been hiding and never even seen him - or anyone else - leave.
"I'll call it in... ha," as he turned, he kicked the small, flat, black and made of leather something out from under the edge of the bed, "what's this then? It should make our job easier."
He flipped it open and started at the ID card for a moment. The woman who stared back, he thought to himself, didn't look anything like the kind to be involved in this sort of whole scale vandalism and violence... but then, they so often didn't, did they?
~oOo~
Cheyenne Mountain, 5.03 am
Someone else was also trying, way way too early the next morning, for tact, diplomacy and persuasion... and failing dismally.
Last night's meeting had been a bust, even if no one was quite brave enough to tell Daniel.
Last night's meeting had also gone on for two hours before anyone had managed to slow Daniel down long enough to let them escape.
It wasn't surprising then, that when ambushed by Daniel and assailed - yet again - with far too many words for this early in the morning, military protocol tended to crack a little at the edges. And he had never been big on protocol anyway.
"Daniel, you said they broke out."
Jack O'Neill was anything butas stupid as he sometimes liked to play, but - faced with spending way too much time with two of the brightest people on the whole damn planet - he had learned that there were times when ignorance really was bliss. So okay, the one who made his head hurt with sciencey... stuff wasn't doing it at the minute, but the one who made his head hurt with words and ideas and history and theories and sofaroutsidetheboxitwasn'tfunny... stuff?
Oh yeah. Hurting a lot, here, Doctor Jackson.
"It makes perfect sense." Daniel pushed his glasses up and looked around, willing his team to join him in his sofaroutsidetheboxitwasn'tfunny place. "The mummies were, from what I can gather, of the correct Egyptian period, 8th Dynasty or thereabout, and though I'm still waiting for the Pentagon to obtain definitive photographic evidence -"
And wouldn't whichever Pentagon flunky who got that research job thank them for it, Jack thought. Not.
"If we assume, and I think we can at least theoretically assume, that they could be connected in some way with Mafdet -"
"That's rather a reach, isn't it Daniel?" Carter demurred, and for once Jack wanted to thank her for being a voice of reason.
"Maybe," Daniel wasn't having any part of voicing reason, though, "but 2000-year old antiquities don't disappear on their own."
Jack waved a dismissive hand at him. "Someone stole them."
"Why?"
"What?"
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why would anyone steal them?"
Remembering the pictures, Jack didn't have an answer to that.
"They're the right period, they're one of the right species, they're the right level of Go'auld ugliness, they're acting rather of character for millennia-dead cats..." Daniel looked around impatiently. "What more do you want?"
"Something that maybe, just maybe, makes sense would be nice. Something that actually shows they're part of this Muffie -"
"Mafdet."
"- Business? That would be good." Actually it wouldn't; Jack really didn't want the situation to get more difficult and looking around, he wasn't the only one. It was hard enough to take seriously Muffie and her looming "eruption of death and fiery despair to worlds without end", (which, as he has pointed out enough times to really annoy his archeologist, had now been looming for something like 3000 years so he didn't see why everyone thought they had only days to panic appropriately) without bringing in something, or somethings, from a bad horror movie.
Creepy-as-fuck mummified and very very dead cats that broke out of museums on their own very very dead power -? No. No, Doctor Jackson. Not gonna believe it until belief couldn't damn well be avoided any more, Doctor Jackson.
Jack sighed, and tried for more diplomacy. "Daniel, it's not that we don't believe you, it's just -"
"You don't believe me. Then," Daniel's blue eyes glinted, "how did someone break the glass cabinets - from the inside?"
"You don't know they did, you've just got just this crazy news story and nothing else. Nothing to tie it to the mysterious disappearing Maude and her shifty kid and the ATF and -"
"Oh, I think we have something, Colonel."
Hammond strode towards them, looking stern and angry and in command - and just a touch, hard though it was to believe, frazzled.
"Uhhh... we do?"
Hammond never looked frazzled. Not even after a meeting like last night's. Not even after foothold alarms, body-swapping emergencies, alien infections, visitors from outer space, hostile visitors from outer space, naked visitors from outer space... hell, Hammond didn't even get frazzled during one of Carter-and-Daniel-and-half-their-geek-squad's patented late night briefings that went on a hell of a lot longer than last night's had, and which left Jaffa, Tok'ra and military officialdom en masse dazed and staggering. But he was frazzled now.
This couldn't be good.
"There's been an altercation at the La Selle Salzmann Inn in town; our usual contacts with the Police Department," a flicker of some unnamed emotion touched the General's face and his subordinates who knew too well of the numerous alien-inspired-and-totally-hush-hush reasons for the SGC to have said contacts all winced, "advised that it was one of those... odd cases. Apparently Room 317 was the location of an unexplained fracas during the night, no one is quite sure who was involved or why since whoever was there disappeared before the police arrived, but the room was booked to a," he glanced at the paper in his hand, "Minna Skillington."
Teal'c frowned.
Hammond's lips twitched. "Whom I believe to have been the lady and Doctor Fraiser met in town yesterday, Teal'c."
"As we informed you on our return. That is correct." Teal'c nodded. "A most engaging woman, not to my mind one who would be involved in combat in a hired room. Or," his frown deepened, "anywhere at all."
"Appearances can be deceiving, especially on our planet."
"Was she injured? Does she require assistance in punishing those responsible?"
"Well... if she does, we would have to leave it to the civilian authorities, but the fact is, no one knows. She's missing."
"There's a lot of that going around," Jack said sourly.
"Sir?" Carter looked puzzled.
"Come on, Carter, next thing we know, she'll turn out to be another card-carrying member of the Simpson-Standish-de Saussure-WhoKnowsHowManyOtherNames clan."
"Don't you think that's rather... farfetched, sir?" Carter, who had heard the whole tale from Janet Fraiser and could see Teal'c's frown deepen even more, tried for the same voice of reason that... well, that hadn't worked on Daniel. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation for the fight, and why the police thought it might have something to do with the SGC, which," she paused, looking bemused, "is the part that I'm not clear on, why would they think we would be interested in a brawl in a hotel? General?"
Hammond paused, looked at Daniel's brightly interested face, and sighed. "Because of the also unexplained fragments of what I reluctantly suspect will prove to be mummified cat strewn across the room."
Oh great. Jack closed his eyes. "Mummified..."
"Cat. They're not certain, it was apparently hard to tell given the quite startling number of bullets fired into the objects. However, given that they are very old, very dead, wrapped in what look like the remains of bandages with animal-like features painted on them... and that they may even include traces of what appears to be unusual technology, the sort that the local higher authorities have learned to contact me about... we may have to look at it as a possibility, albeit one that will not be easy to explain away."
"Mafdet," Daniel breathed, both horrified and fascinated. "They must be Mafdet's mummified cats. They are probably connected with the bomb in some way, and if they've been activated -"
"It might be as well," Carter nodded furiously.
"If not immediately -"
"We have no way to tell when -"
"And if there are other weapons in other museums -"
"They could be set off -"
"Or break out as well. Every Egyptian collection in the world could hold -"
"Who knows what?"
"And they are, presumably, heading straight for Maude de Sausurre, the bomb, and her son the small-time criminal and ATF agent," General Hammond finished grimly. "With who knows what result if they come together."
"So this is bad," Jack summed up, remembering just too late that thing about being trying to be less helpful. From the looks he got from his General and both of his scientists, he really had to remember better. "We really really need to find that ATF agent and his mother, don't we?"
"Given that it is already our top priority, Colonel, if you have any better ideas - that don't involve unacceptable levels of violence, of course - I'll be glad to hear them. But in the meantime..."
Hammond stopped, the frazzled look returning. "Major Carter, I have another task for you, concerning Doctor Fraiser."
That was right, they hadn't seen her all morning, and O'Neill spared a brief, surprised thought that he hadn't noticed her not chasing down Daniel and his healing, but not yet healed, leg.
"Sir?" Carter tried not to look too baffled by the seeming non sequitur.
"You will need to make an official call on the Colorado Springs Police Department, and I'm insisting on an escort, given that - from what my contacts tell me - Doctor Fraiser may have been," a peculiar expression touched the General's face, "arrested."
~oOo~
Colorado Springs Police Department, 5.20 am
"I'm sorry, Doctor Fraiser," the detective in charge said with absolutely no apology in his voice, "but you're gonna have to explain it better than that. So what were you doing masquerading as this Skillington woman and shooting up a hotel room full of dead cats anyway?"
-till next time...-