He seemed to be half lying on the hard ground, his back leaning on a kind of medieval fashioned wooden cart and the air seeming so cold and gloomy. There was no civilian, no one in the old streets, only the Ori's shots crashing on a kind of old and mossy statue set on a large pedestal. And Cam could feel it: white-hot pain shooting through his torso, one of his legs, one shoulder… he could not list all the body parts that felt as if they were burning to the bone. Every breathe he was taking would nearly send him out cold, even the most shallow ones, and he felt as if he didn't have enough strength to even groan with agony and despair; he had been shot, he had been mortally injured, he could not make it out of the planet alive. It was a trap and he was shot while he tried to help the villagers to take cover, they ended up killed and now he was going to die as well, far from the one he loved, forgotten somewhere where he is only a vile foe that do not accept the teaching of the Origin…

And his team! His team and his friends… He failed them: his blurred and fading sight found them: they were hiding behind that only statue, under heavy fire with no way to get out of that situation. By the commotion he could hear coming from another street, SG1 was going to be surrounded by the enemies and caught off in their back. In his fear and confusion, Mitchell wanted to reach for his gun, but even if it was on his lap, his hands laid limply on the paved street at his side. He could not even wipe the blood dripping from his mouth; he could not get rid on the scent of burnt flesh from the blaster wounds; he was often forgetting to breathe in...

Daniel was out: he could feel it even if Teal'c was carrying him, full of hope… or maybe desperate. The Jaffa seemed to be telling something to the two women remaining, as if he was shouting something at them but again Cam was too close to Death to hear anything but a low growling of the gunshots. The colonel hiccupped very weakly and uncontrollably once or twice as if it was a vain attempt to cough out the blood pouring inside him from the large staff-wound; he nearly died right on place so much it hurt and his eyes rolled upward in his head for a few seconds. When he could regain the very little strength he had left, his glassy gaze went on the puddle of blood forming in the dirt around him. It was like crimson royal velvet, like a cloak falling on the floor at his feet… it could have been beautiful his addled mind thought. His faint breathe halted a little longer this time.

There was sound of running feet coming from behind him now and a large group of Ori soldiers passed by him: they noticed him, but didn't even think it was necessary to try anything against the dying man. And before Cam could understand what this meant, the enemies were already shooting on SG1 that were not expecting the attack from behind at all. His friends. Mitchell closed his eyelids tightly, unable to even clench his teeth or swallow bitterly, too numb and agonizing to react: but he knew he couldn't watch the scene this time. It was his fault: if he wasn't dying uselessly on the side of the town center this way, he could have warned them, use his last strength to tell him the enemies were coming from behind their cover…

Samantha. Daniel. Teal'c… and Vala. Cam could not hear their gun working anymore, the soldiers stopped shooting as well: the fight was over and he knew it wasn't because they just have been beamed out of danger with a really good timing. A tear could have drop from the colonel's eyes if they were not that dry and tired to do so.

He lifted one eyelid as to acknowledge his friend one last time before dying: the soldiers were already and so silently gone: how long had he kept his eyes shut? And on the paved and straw covered street he could see another cloak of crimson velvet blood, on what laid the still form of his team-mates. He was barely seeing anymore, he felt so cold he couldn't even shiver, but what was left of his being was crushed by the sight. So that was it: he was agonising in the village for the beginning, that alternate reality story and the Letelk madness was just the hallucinations of an oxygen starved and failing brain. And as he was randomly running in the SGC corridors in his mind, his friends were getting killed.

Again he closed his eyes, ready to die, bitterly wanting to die because he deserved nothing more from this blatant failure. The pain was nearly gone, he only felt way too cold. But a rustle close to him drew his attention then…

"Cameron!"

A voice called him so pleadingly he shot his eyes open the faster he could –but still quite slowly and half opened- and he tried to focus on the distorted and blurred shape he could barely see.

"Cameron! Dare facing me!"

The voice was not as pleading anymore: it nearly hissed and the colonel could distinguish that it was coming from a vague shape crawling toward him and leaving a trail of red blood behind it. Confused and unable to think clearly at all now that he could not feel his own body, he realised the one crawling was Mal Doran. He tried to slur her name, but only a raucous gasp hardly escaped his dry mouth. She was now close enough for him to see her face… and at this moment he began to look at her with frightened wild eyes: there was a bloody hole right in the middle of her forehead, so deep through her head it seemed black. And her iris and pupils were faded like they use to on dead bodies. So was so close, smiling creepily and Mitchell knew it wasn't her, it was worst than a nightmare!

"Cameron, look at what you did to me! Look at what you've done to your own friends!"

Vala said between her clenched teeth, so maniacally Cam only wanted to back off… But right now he was unable to even move his head laid back, the faint agony hiccups would only drag more blood to his mouth and his bluish lips, and his chest was not breathing in or out anymore. Only his wild but glassier eyes were moving frantically. So the nightmare figure too much like the woman he knew once reached her blood-covered hands in a heartbreaking pleading look, setting her hands on his cheek each side of his head to force him to look in her white eyes. Everything was getting darker but Mal Doran forcing him to face her ghastly smiling face. Mitchell wanted to scream, to deny this vision of pure horror to see a friend dead and blaming him, yet only his lips moved weakly, forming the words "No… no…"

"Yes you did… Yes you did Cameron. And you cannot escape it; you caused our death and because of this no one will protect Earth from the Ori… You doomed us all!"

Her voice was now terribly full of anguish and so much despair it looked pure madness; her whispering was deafening him, the way her voice fainted at the end on the so dreadful truth was like a stab to the man's weakly pulsing heart. This time the lt. colonel was even able to move his lips, his eyes close to be rolling upward once for all as Death was taking over him.

"You murdered us all! …"

Vala kept on, tears of sorrow and anger in her dead eyes. She drew back slowly on her hands and knees to look at the agonizing man half leaning on the cold hard street, his wild unfocussed eyes trying to avoid her creepy face as he was going to pass out once for all soon.

"You murdered every one of us…"

She growled. Then suddenly, like a mad predator attacking its prey, the dead woman jump on the man and circle his exposed throat with her hands, pressing on to choke him. Mitchell immediately felt the fear and the distress and she was pressing even more and remembering him he had to breathe, but again he was too weak and wounded to even try to fight. He shivered uncontrollably; horrified by her absolutely mad and psycho wince before everything became dark. The man slump and his head drop to his chest, emptying his lungs in a last breathe out.


The very moment Carolyn turned away from the door to get back to work; her eyes immediately went on Mitchell still form, with a hint of apprehension: she thought she heard him stir. She walked to his bed and went beside a nurse still working, hoping he wouldn't start convulsing again and checking his vitals one more time as if she could find something new. Yet things never go how they are supposed to: even with all the sedative they gave him to calm the colonel down, he was now trying to lash out his able arm into a clenched fist. He nearly stroke a man from the med team and for a short moment, all the people working around his bed slightly backed off in surprise because reaching back for the man to pin him still on the mattress.

"Wh… Again?! But I gave him sedative!... Get the blood test to the lab and fast; we have to find out what is driving him this way!"

Lam let out with a mix of an offended and alarmed tone, rushing to the unconscious man's side and checking the monitors. The nurse with the blood test immediately leaved as the others were again trying to stop the feverously fighting colonel. And this time the man was even trying to kick them out, no great fear on his face but more like annoyance and anger… The med team didn't notice the two persons suddenly popping their head by the doorway to watch with concern: Vala and Daniel didn't go too far even if Lam ordered them to do so. They heard the commotion starting back again and came right away, helpless and really worried.

Yet Mitchell flinched and even shivered when he probably moved too abruptly his injured wrist, stopping that unexpectedly to struggle as he had now lines of pain on his face. Carolyn examined him again and realised he unplugged the IV line and could have hurt himself badly with the tube in his throat as well with all this struggling. Though he didn't even look like he was trying to breathe without, like he well able to fight as hell but was too weak to do something that simple than breathe in. Maybe he had his brain stem somehow damaged: this part of the brain controls, among others, those kinds of vital functions after all. But how: he was struck behind the head, yes, but not at the exact location, a little higher than the brain stem… And when he was struggling, he was still in coma and not apoplectic, like tossing in his sleep but on a terrific scale: she could see it on the encephalogram, knowing what the readings meant even if she was not specialised in brain function in full details.

As she looked at the screen again, the readings got even wilder… then the others monitors began to ring with their alarms: without further reasons, Mitchell was going into a critical state: the heart rate was getting quicker but the pulse weaker. Immediately, Jackson and Mal Doran came in the room, unable to stay that far when their friend and leader was struggling against something they didn't even know and mysterious symptoms threatening his life. They could only watch helplessly as the medics and the physician were trying to stabilise him in any way.

"What can we do?!" Vala whispered to Daniel, obviously really concerned and powerless.

"We can't do anything; it's all up to Lam and Mitchell now…" Jackson seemed as well quite disturbed by that.

"I don't understand what can possibly drive him this way." Vala kept on, desperate.

"I'm sure it's about the Letelk thing…" Daniel said gloomily.

"But it has been removed! It is not in him anymore, not even close to him! And he didn't keep the blue thing with him for more than a day."

"Yet Mitchell had been healed many times by the creature itself before…"

Daniel said; seeming lost in his thoughts. But he suddenly looked more surprised as he realised something and exclaimed quietly:

"Quite many times now that I think about it: the creature was always using its power on him…"

Then something stroke him, even more when he caught the sight of the colonel back at the weak convulsing, obviously in critical state even with no injury remaining: it seemed familiar, not a situation that happened to the colonel before, but to him…

"The Goa'uld light-projecting device on P4X-347! The sarcophagus! It's the same thing than the too frequent exposure to the pebbles!" Jackson suddenly exclaimed with shock.

"What?! What do you mean by that?!" Vala asked, puzzled in front of Daniel sudden attitude.

But before Daniel could elaborate his idea and expose it to Mal Doran, they could hear the distinct sound of the monitor going flat: obviously heart failure! Startled, both SG1 members rushed to Mitchell's side, not taking care anymore of the fact they could annoy the medics: Vala was calling his name and Lam was giving orders to reanimate the poor man. Daniel stared with shock and panic when they began using the paddles.

"Carolyn, Carolyn; we need to get him in contact with the spike you removed! Where is it?" He exclaimed suddenly, drawing her attention and urging her.

Lam was already shocking Mitchell a second time while the nurses were helping, turning her attention away from the man to take a quick surprised look as she realized the two were back and as she heard what Daniel said. But Cam's heart stopped beating again and the alarms started again. The physician took her attention back on her patient, giving orders to the staff and readying the paddles for another shocking to start the heart back. A nurse tried to drive Vala and Daniel out of their way, but they would not move as Lam send the electricity to Cam's chest and turned to them when the heart seemed to pulse again:

"The spike?! Why do you want it?!" Carolyn raised her surprised tone since there was so much noise around them.

"Mitchell will die if we don't get a hand on it soon!" Jackson answered, urging her.

"I don't have it: they already are sending it away from the base!" The physician said, a little confused and shocked by his words.

"What?! But…" Daniel stammered with shock and dread.

"In your office! Daniel it may work!" Vala suddenly exclaimed, having an idea.

Without any explanation, she pulled on Jackson sleeved and quickly ran out of the infirmary, dragging Daniel behind her; letting the medics to their reanimation job and Lam to her confusion. As he was following her in the corridors, trying to avoid running literally into the staff, Daniel finally understood what she had in mind and accelerated even more. They had to make it in time: they knew the med team would not be able to keep Mitchell alive forever by shocking him with the paddles.

He nearly tripped when he suddenly stopped and turned to enter his office: the door was open and the lights on since he was working in it before Vala came and dragged him to the infirmary. Without hesitation, he and Mal Doran began to frenetically search the room for some item somewhere in this room filled with artifact, books and paper sheets.

"Vala, where did you put the stone?!" Jackson let out nervously as he was kneeling to look under his desk.

"You snapped it out of my hands before I could set it somewhere!" Protested the woman, still searching the room the quicker she could.

"It has to be somewhere!" The man complained as he was trying to look under another furniture.

"You hided it so I could not find it, didn't you? And now you can't find it?" Vala let out: she was clearly blaming him.

But at this moment, with the anxiousness and the hurriedness, she accidentally pushed off a shelf a rare and authentic artifact that, to Daniel's opinion, could prove the Goa'uld went in medieval India as well and maybe settled another Stargate, sending it breaking into pieces on the floor. At the particular sound of breaking pottery, the doctor froze himself and turned toward the woman sheepishly staring at the pieces with wide opened eyes. And then, when he lowered his eyes on the broken object, he saw the small box he putted under this shelf to hide the Letelk stone. Daniel must have hurried to it so quickly he nearly knocked his head hard on the shelf, but he was not taking care of that detail and he immediately rushed out his office, followed by Vala.

Again they ran as fast as they can in the corridors and without crashing into the other SGC staff. Just as they were sprinting to catch the elevator before it would close, they nearly ran into Carter. Startled, she looked at them with confusion for about a second, and then regained her composure to ask them loud enough as they were already distancing her:

"Hey! What's the matter?!"

"Mitchell's in danger, we don't have time!" Vala answered the best she could as she was still running, her tone clearly concerned and alarmed.

"What?!" Carter exclaimed, shocked again.

But the two had already disappeared in the elevator and the doors were shutting. Again Sam stayed stunned and bewildered a second or two before rushing to the elevator as well and calling another one to get to Cam, seriously worried.

When Daniel and Vala finally reached the infirmary, Cam's heart had failed again and the medics were trying to revive him for maybe the third time. Without wasting any seconds, Jackson rushed to the bed while opening the small box and taking out the Letelk pebble. Mal Doran pushed away a nurse in their way to let Jackson get to the bedside and at last, he putted the blue rounded alien rock right on Mitchell's bare chest before he would be given another shock.

It was a complete astonishment as the med team and Lam stared with surprise at the small object the two people from SG1 just set on the patient in critical state and interrupted their important work. The suddenly, the alarms coming from the monitors stopped and they all turned their head toward it at the same time: everything was back to normal that quickly –except the too high body temperature of course but it was decreasing fast. The stone wasn't enough to heal his wrist, but it sure saved Mitchell's life somewhat…

"How can that be possible?!" Lam asked Daniel and Vala with bewilderment, now facing them as the nurses were checking the unconscious man.

"Um, we figured out it was a kind of addiction…" Jackson began, trying to catch back his breathe from the wicked race he just made.

"Addicted to the bloodthirsty blue monster…" Vala commented; her eyes set on Cam still showing concern.

"So it was all withdrawal symptoms?!" Carolyn asked, astonished by the new.

"I fear so…"

Jackson answered, now setting his gaze as well on his unconscious friend. They all stayed silent as they pondered on what could have happened if they haven't figured out in time… Still it wasn't over yet with their leader.


To be continued ('cause it ain't over yet evil grin )