Four Days Later:

Sam walked into the Pentagon, wearing her dress blues and flashing her ID badge at every security point. It was nearly ten minutes before she reached the office of Major General Jack O'Neill.

"May I help you?" Lt. Bethany Powell, a twenty-something year-old, thin, brunette Air Force officer, asked, looking at Sam.

"Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter here to see General O'Neill." She said, urgently.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, but he will know what it's regarding."

"Yes, ma'am." She said, reaching for the intercom button as Sam looked around the office. It was stark and clinical like most Pentagon offices were; it was so different from Jack.

"He'll see you now, Colonel." The lieutenant reported a moment later.

"Thank you." Sam said, managing a small smile for her as she walked into Jack's office.

"Carter!" He greeted. "I wasn't expecting you. What's up?"

She sighed, silently.

"Ah, the meeting was that great, huh?" He asked, sympathetically.

"I told him about my experience, but he kept insisting that he was a different president, and that he would never subject the country to martial law." She said, shaking her head. "If I wanted to be caught in a power struggle, I would have tried harder to save Kinsey from the Trust."

Jack had to bite back a laugh.

She bit the inside of her cheek seriously. "It was terrible, sir." She said after a moment.

He looked at her with equal seriousness. "You're not talking about the meeting anymore, are you?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Why don't you tell me about it?" He said, sitting back in the leather chair that Hammond had requisitioned from the office at the SGC two years earlier upon his promotion. He clasped his hands together, and he had schooled his features into what Sam called his "serious face".

"Well, first of all, they were going to abandon the rest of the galaxy to the Ori just because I'd offered them a way to protect their own sorry asses from the Ori ships." She said, angrily.

She noticed the shocked look on his face at her curse. "Sorry, sir."

"No, it's okay..." He said, shaking his head. "I just...didn't realize how strongly you felt about this."

"I do." She said, soberly.

"What else?"

"They used goa'uld pain sticks on demonstrators."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I was at this...gala..." She said with a sigh. "I was speaking with the President when suddenly, we heard a little commotion. Someone had gotten through security, and had begun yelling: "No security without freedom". They hit him, used a goa'uld pain stick until he was unconscious, and then beamed the President up onto Air Force One which had previously been the Prometheus!"

He noticed that her eyes were still troubled. "What else?"

"Sir," she said with a sigh. "They set up interviews for me with Julia Donovan, but cut me off when I tried to remind the country that they are the ones in control of the government. Not the other way around. They had me followed when I tried to find Cam Mitchell and Rodney McKay. They zatted me after I left McKay's the second time."

He bit back a sarcastic comment.

"I've never been..." She stopped herself. "Besides that...Mongolian planet where I was kidnapped and sold as a slave to that...chauvinistic Chief, I've never been more humiliated in my life than I was when they brought me, bound and gagged before their Commander in Chief..."

"Sam..."

"Only part of the problem is who the President is, sir." She said, seriously. "Most of it is about what our country is going to think about...the Project especially when science fiction is so inextricably linked to horror in the television and film industry."

"Sam..." He tried again.

"We can't tell them. Not yet." She said with eyes set in determination. "I need someone else supporting me here."

"You're the only one who saw it, Carter."

"You think you need to see a world where F-302s are used to bomb Irish communities with one word from the Prime Minister because of political differences? Where a multi-billionaire is blackmailed into government service so that the government can rid their world of a political conscience?" She asked, looking at him with more than a little frustration.

"Right...McKay was that world's Bill Gates..." He said, absently. It bothered him that any Sam anywhere would have married Dr. High-and-Mighty Rodney McKay.

"And he was that Samantha Carter's ex-husband, but none of that matters." She said, angrily. "The point, sir, is that all of his freedoms were taken away." She inhaled sharply. "I don't know about you, sir, but that goes against everything I believe in, and everything that I've been fighting for."

"Carter, I agree." He said, seriously. "But it's out of my hands."

"Just...a word..." She pleaded. "Something..."

"I'll see what I can do, Colonel." He said, seriously.

"Thank you." She said, accepting his formality as a sign for her dismissal.

"Carter..."

"Yes?" She asked, looking back at him.

"Are you finished with your briefing?"

She nodded. "Officially...yes."

"Unofficially?"

"I feel like I need to do more to get my point across."

"Carter, I'm going to do what I can. Let's wait until we know for sure one way or another."

"Yes, sir." She said, nodding somewhat wearily.

"Is that all you wanted to talk about?"

She nodded again. "Yes, sir."

"Okay. I'll check in with you after I'm finished here."

"All right." She said, nodding slowly as she opened the door and walked out of his office.

He watched her go with a small sigh. It looked like she could use some cheering up, or at least a little help in her quest for justice. He sighed as he looked at the phone on his desk. Finally, he picked it up. "Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir?" His secretary answered promptly.

"Put in a call to the President. I need to talk to him."

"Yes, sir." She said, affirmatively. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. Get me some dinner reservations for some...nice restaurant." He said, pensively. "Make sure it has a good wine list."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but I thought you were a beer guy."

"My date says she likes beer, but I know she just tolerates it. She's a bit classier than I am."

"Ah." She said with understanding. "Dinner for two, then?"

"Yes."

"Consider it done, sir." She said, seriously.

"Thank you." He said as he hung up the phone. He hadn't wanted to seem as phased by the President's idea as Carter had been, but he was just as unsettled as she was, if not more.

Damn politicians, he thought to himself as he hit his fist on the desk.