"Unscheduled Offworld Activation!" Blared over the loud speakers followed by an alarm and flashing lights which caused the quiet base to spring to life. The commissary cleared out in a matter of seconds, each person trained to drop everything and report to their duty stations; something they did without question. Soon only one person remained to enjoy the solitude the now empty room provided. That person being Colonel Samantha Carter; second in command of the SGC's flagship team, SG-1. She wasn't exactly ignoring the alarm, she and General Landry had been expecting this new arrival for hours now. So she wasn't surprised when the base quieted once more, a few minutes later, and someone joined her at the table.
"I got here as fast as I could." Former Air Force General and now host to the Tok'ra Selmak, Jacob Carter explained as he slipped into a chair across from his daughter."Tarin said you sounded frantic when you contacted him, what's wrong?" He searched her for any signs of injury but found none. Her silence was starting to unnerve and worry him; she was never this quiet unless she was working on one of her gadgets. "Sammie?"
Samantha, better known as Sam to her friends, looked away from her cup of untouched blue jell-o. "You lied to me." She finally broke the silence that was beginning to stretch between them.
Jacob blinked at her tone and pushed away the urge to contact General Landry and inquire about his daughters mental health. "I lied to you?" He failed to understand her statement. "I don't understand, Sam. What did I lie to you about? When?" He, frantically, searched his memories for a clue as to what she was talking about but found none.
"You lied about my brother!" Suddenly, Sam seemed to come alive. "How could you?!" She hissed out as her barely contained anger began to push against her resolve.
"When did I lie about Mark?" Jacob wasn't the only one confused. Neither host nor symbiote knew what Sam was talking about. "Did something happen to Mark? Is he okay?"
Sam pushed herself away from the table causing her chair to scrap across the concrete floor. "I'm not talking about Mark! God, how can you be so..." She was seething now and not thinking straight. Had he truly forgotten about the child he had given away all those years ago? The very child that he had tearfully informed his two oldest children had died with its mother? A child she hadn't known, until this very day, had been a boy? A brother? "I'm talking about the child you lied to us about twenty-seven years ago. Did you think we'd beg you to keep him? To not give him away like some...some...inanimate object?" She crossed her arms over her chest waiting for him to answer.
Jacob froze and ignored Selmak's demand for answers; she could wait, his daughter couldn't. "The baby died, Sam. How did I lie about that?" He felt old wounds being ripped open but he fought past the sadness and pain. "What's going on, Sam?" He really was confused now. What did his dead child have to do with anything? And why was she angry about it?
"Why do you keep referring to him as the baby? Or does it make it easier for you to forget about him that way?" Sam felt some of her anger drain upon hearing the honest confusion in his voice. She just wanted answers, was that too much to ask for?
"Because back then that particular hospital didn't release the sex of stillborn children. They thought it was the humane thing to do. I always wondered..." Jacob trailed off and looked at his daughter when something occurred to him. "Brother." He whispered. "You're referring to the baby as a boy." It finally clicked. "What happened today, Sam? Something to do with the baby?"
Sam sat back down, her anger completely gone. "I had two visitors this afternoon. They introduced themselves as Xander Harris and Buffy Summers. Where they then told me that Xander, a nickname I'm sure, was my brother." She fell silent to let her words sink in.
Jacob sat back in his chair not expecting this revelation. "That's impossible." He finally said once he got over the shock. "Are you sure they weren't NID or some other Agency snooping around?"
"That's what we used to say about traveling to other worlds." Sam said, quietly. "I thought about that but I don't think so. They honestly looked nervous about telling me. If it was some elaborate lie then they would have been calm, collected, like they were trying to sell me it. The meeting was a little awkward, granted, but they didn't threaten me nor did I feel threatened at anytime. The girl, Buffy, even told me that they were staying at the Radisson downtown for another two days if I wanted to make contact. She put the ball in my court, something a trained operative wouldn't have done. They had ample opportunity to cause me harm and they didn't. I have to take that into account."
"So you believe their story?" Jacob just couldn't wrap his mind around it. "Any way we can check out if they really are who they say they are?" He questioned with a raised brow.
Sam smiled for the first time since her father arrived. "There sure is." She reached over and pulled her laptop, it had been discarded with a tray of food earlier, over so it was in front of her. Pulling up the correct program, she inputted the names, Xander Harris and Buffy Summers, into the system and sat back to wait for it to complete its search. To her surprise, it didn't take long at all. Scanning over the first window that popped up, a news paper article, she began to read the article aloud. "Massacre at California high school graduation leaves eighty students, the town Mayor, and school Principle dead and another twenty-five students wounded or missing. Sources close to the incident report that a local gang hyped up on PCP attacked during the Mayor's speech proceeding to kill anyone they laid eyes on. Angry that members of the student body, staff, and visiting parents were able to escape, several members slipped away from the crowd and planted high yield explosives around the school causing it to explode a short time later. Pictured below are five survivors. From left to right, Cordelia Chase, Oz Osbourne, Buffy Summers, Xander Harris, and Willow Rosenberg." She took a moment to observe each dirty, yet, smiling face in the picture. "That's one graduation I don't think any of them will ever forget."
Jacob pushed his chair back and moved around the table to get a better look at the picture. "Is there anything else on them?" He sat down in the chair beside her.
Typing in a few more commands Sam was able to cross reference the Massacre against all California high schools until she was able to find the right one. "Here's another article. Sunnydale High Rebuilt Better Than Ever." She read the title then moved on to the body. "When asked about their feelings in reference to the new Sunnydale High, most residence declined to comment. The ones that did had little praise for what they refer to as Sunnyhell High. Before it's destruction in nineteen ninety-nine, Sunnydale High had the highest mortality rate of any school in the United States. And the class of ninety-nine had the highest in the history of the school district. According to project foreman and former Sunnydale alumni, Xander Harris, 'the new school is not only state of the art and perfectly safe but it also lacks for nothing' while Peer Guidance Councilor Buffy Summers, another former alumni, is wary of the new school especially now that little sister, Dawn, is attending. She was quoted as saying 'If Dawn has to face some of the things my friends and I faced while attending Sunnyhell High, she'll have no problem in the real world because by the time she's ready to graduate something will have either tried to eat her, posses her, or pressure her to smoke.' When referring to another school Ms. Summers words may sound strange but they fit here at Sunnydale. Former Principle Flutie along with the school mascot, Herbert the pig, were attacked and essentially eaten when wild dogs broke into the campus during Ms. Summers sophomore year. While during her junior year a teacher was murdered by a janitor, it was rumored that he had been possed by an angry spirit, something he still claims to this very day." She blinked and looked at her father unable to believe what she had just read. "Are they serious? Spirits?"
"It would seem so." Jacob affirmed. "Sunnydale Press appears to be the local newspaper." He pointed out several articles on gang violence and store sales. "Why are you just getting newspaper articles? I thought your program was designed to pull up all relevant facts and data on a person?" Or that's what he understand when she explained it to him.
Sam frowned. "It is." She typed in another command and wasn't surprised when another article popped up. "It's an engagement announcement." She pointed out. "Anthony and Jessica Harris would like to announce the engagement of their only son, Alexander Harris to Anya Jenkins, daughter of Hans and Fritz Jenkins." She stopped reading after that when she saw the look on her fathers face. "What?"
Jacob was drawn to Anthony's name "I was at the academy with an Anthony Harris. We were friends and even kept in touch after graduation. Last I heard he had been caught drinking while on duty, for the third time, and given an dishonorary discharge. That had to be...twenty, maybe, twenty-five years ago." If Xander was indeed his son, how did his old Air Force buddy get him?
"I don't understand why this isn't working." Sam fought back the urge to slam her laptop on the table over and over again until it did what it was programed to do. "It's like the program is being rerouted before it reaches its destination."
"Rerouted? How?" Jacob eyed the screen as another article popped up. "Thanks to two students, Buffy Summers and Alexander Harris, of Sunnydale Highschool, a lunch lady's plot to poison all the students at Sunnydale High, has been unveiled. Mister Harris quickly alerted his fellow students when he stumbled upon the lunch lady pouring rat poison into the special of the day. Ms. Summers then wrestled away a butcher knife from the deranged woman when she charged out of the kitchen and into the cafeteria where she then alerted authorities to the situation. The police immediately arrested her and disposed of the meal." He paused for a moment. "What kind of a school was this and why did people continue to send their kids there?"
Sam shrugged. "I suppose because people, especially adults, see only what they want to. It was probably easier to just turn a blind eye to the goings on rather than face it." She typed something in and smiled when the correct data finally appeared on the screen. "Finally!"
Jacob had to smile at her enthusiasm. "You got something other than colorful newspaper articles that read like something out of the twilight zone?"
"I think so. I used a backdoor to gain access to their birth certificates." Sam was quite proud of her little hacking job. "Okay, Harris, Alexander LaVelle. Date of Birth: December ninth, nineteen eighty. Place of Birth: Sunnydale Memorial Hospital. Parents: Anthony and Jessica Harris. That's it for him. Summers, Buffy Anne. Date of Birth: January ninth, nineteen eighty-one. Place of Birth: Los Angeles Community Hospital. Parents: Hank and Joyce Summers. Birth certificates don't really tell you much." She pointed out.
"It tells me that if the kid really is mine, someone went through a lot of trouble to make his connection to his birth family disappear. It takes a lot of pull in all the right places to get a new birth certificate issued and filed." Jacob sighed and sat back, rubbed his head where a headache was forming.
Sam, having an idea, began to type in earnest. "I think I know another way to gain access to their records."
Jacob watched his daughter work not for the first time feeling extremely proud of her. "What are you doing."
"I'm going to bypass..." Sam trailed off when suddenly a set of numbers appeared in the lower right hand corner of the screen, flashing red. "Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh? Uh-oh what?" Jacob looked from Sam to the screen then back again. "What do we do?" His head bowed and when he looked up again his voice had deepened. "I believe flashing numbers are not a good sign, Colonel Carter." Selmak was tired of being left out of the conversation.
Sam gave Selmak a sheepish smile. "I think you're right." She pointed to something on the screen. " I think I may have, inadvertently, activated some kind of automated protection system. I imagine someone isn't going to be too happy with me." She tried to deactivate it but failed. "There is nothing we can do but wait and see what we've just flushed out."
Selmak gave his hosts daughter a stern look. "It would appear that Xander Harris and Buffy Summers are more than they appear." His head bowed again and this time Jacob reemerged. "They've been flagged, Sam. I've seen this before and it usually doesn't end well."
So caught up in the moment Sam actually jumped when the commissary phone rang. Standing, she went over to answer it. The conversation lasted a minute and when she returned to the table her face had taken on a grim look. "General Landry wants to see us. Seems he just received a phone call from the President and he really didn't sound happy about it."
