Sam put on her best friendly smile before entering the infirmary. "Hi, could you attach this thing to your head? We'd like to rummage through your memories," was the kind of thing that tended to put people on edge. It required a certain degree of tact.
"Hi!" she said brightly, walking into the room. Dean blinked at her in bemusement. Maybe she needed more practice.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Winchester?" Janet supplied, stepping out from behind her.
Dean tried to sit up, grimacing. Janet gently restrained him with a hand to his shoulder.
"Like someone tried to carve a lung out with a rusty knife and then cauterized the wound with a blow torch. But other than that, just peachy," he said.
"That's not too far from the truth," Janet told him. She gestured to the injury, and when he relaxed, moved in to check the bandages. "Though the armor protected you from the worst of the blast," she continued, examining the angry and weeping wound. She removed the bandage.
"They just changed that," he protested.
"Hopefully you won't need it anymore," she said, smiling. He frowned, not understanding. Jacob stepped forward, then looked down at the wound. He whistled.
"Boy, she wasn't joking, kid. Half an inch lower and that blast would have gone straight through you."
Dean shrugged one shoulder. He didn't look too concerned by his near miss. "Who are you?"
"Call me Jacob," he said, "I'm here to help patch you up."
Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow. Jacob raised his hand, showing Dean the healing device. Dean frowned at it, puzzled. "It's a healing device," Jacob said. "Just hold still. It'll feel weird, but it shouldn't hurt." Dean frowned some more as the device buzzed to life, but he didn't protest. When it was over, he poked at the newly healed skin. "That thing must come in handy."
"Not as often as you'd think," Sam said wryly. "But we're not here just for that, I'm afraid. We need to talk to you."
"Fine," Dean said. "But I'm not into pillow talk. Get me some pants, and then we'll chat."
"That can be arranged," Janet said dryly. She was amused but didn't want to show it, Sam guessed. Janet spoke to one of the orderlies, who left and then came back a few minutes later with a black t-shirt and the bottom half of someone's green BDU. They backed away to give him some privacy. After a few minutes, he stepped around the curtain, fully dressed.
"Let's help clear out the infirmary," Sam suggested. "We'll go to one of the conference rooms."
The walked out. Sam waved off the SF's when they started to follow. She led Dean and her father down a series of corridors before finally turning into a spacious room with a long table and several big swivel chairs. There had been an attempt to soften the room with a few plants and some landscape prints. It was designed to put visiting diplomats at ease. Sam offered Dean a chair and then sat down next to him. Dean fidgeted with a paperclip that had been left on the table for a second, but said nothing.
Jacob, sitting across from them, cleared his throat. "Kid, I'm going to be honest with you. Your presence here has raised some serious questions and has caused quite a lot of panic higher up."
"Sorry 'bout that," Dean said roughly, watching them as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam took that as her cue.
"The Stargate program is quite possibly the greatest secret operation in the history of this country," she started. "National security doesn't even begin to cover it. I can't tell you how much is at stake."
Dean closed his eyes and leaned back into his chair. He looked exhausted. "Let me guess. Fate of the galaxy, forces of darkness, the end of the world as we know it." He glanced up at her.
A smile ghosted across Sam's face. "Something like that, yes."
"And Roman gods in Egyptian spaceships."
"They're not gods," Jacob corrected, a little sharply.
"That doesn't make it less weird, man." Dean said.
Sam smiled in what she hoped was a friendly and helpful matter. "Wait until you meet the Asgard- though they're good guys, all things considered- and then talk to me about weird. You get used to it," she said with a smile. "As to the Goa'uld- they're not such good guys. They're parasites and cultural scavengers," she explained. "They take human hosts and have some advanced technologies at their disposal, but they're not gods."
Jacob dipped his head down, and when he looked up, it was Selmak who spoke. "They take on the identities of deities to further the subjugation of those they've taken as slaves. They're petty, depraved, and cruel. They'll do anything to crush those that oppose them, and for that reason this planet and its people are at risk."
"What the fuck," Dean spat, bolting upright and turning to face Jacob head-on. His body was coiled and tense, ready to strike.
Selmak dipped his head. "Sorry about that," Jacob said to Sam. "Selmak got a little worked up."
Sam stood and moved towards Dean, placing her body between him and her father. She held her hands up, and said in a placating tone, "We probably should have warned you." She waved a hand at her father. "This is my dad, Jacob," she paused. "And that was his symbiote, Selmak."
"You've got one of those things in you?" Dean demanded. No one could say he was slow on the uptake. His posture hadn't relaxed at all.
"Selmak is of the Tok'ra. They are enemies of the Goa'uld. It's...different. They only take volunteers."
Dean looked directly at Jacob. "You consented? To be a meat suit?" Something between disgust and amazement filled his face.
"Interesting phrasing, but no. It's like being married," Jacob quipped, trying to cut some of the tension, "But without the mother-in-law."
Dean relaxed a little.
"This is an unusual situation for us," Sam apologized. "Normally, you'd have to sign about fifty non-disclosure agreements before you could even hear the name 'Stargate', but that seems to be moot at this point. Regardless, your presence here represents a huge breach of security. We're not accusing you of anything, but need to know how it happened."
"I told you, we've got no idea. Maybe it's like the colonel said, amnesia."
"I suggest you cooperate, kid," Jacob added. "The Pentagon has been known to overreact in the face of the unknown."
"Is this where you break out the thumbscrews?" Dean said, his posture suddenly very aggressive.
Sam held up a hand. "No. I can understand if you're reluctant to say anything because it sounds crazy. Believe me, we deal in crazy every single day."
Dean glanced sideways at her father. "No kidding. But sweetheart, there's no way I can explain this one to you."
Sam arched an eyebrow at him. "It's Major, Mr. Winchester," she said.
"Fine, whatever."
"In any case, we don't need you to explain," she continued.
He stared at her quizzically. "What?"
She held up her hand and showed him the device. "This is a memory-recall device. By itself, it enhances memories and helps recall even buried and subconscious ones. Attached to a holographic projector, we can actually see those memories."
Dean froze. Sam had expected reluctance, maybe nervousness, but not this.
She continued, but softened her tone, "We'd like to use it to discover how exactly you ended up here. It's completely safe, and practically painless," she added.
He swallowed, and his face went ashen. "No." His voice was rough- as if the word had been torn out of his throat with fish hooks. He had a death grip on the back of the chair, which he'd spun around, putting it between them. "The answer's no."
"It's harmless," Jacob tried to assure him. "It can be set to only show memories as they come to mind."
"No." His jaw was set in a stubborn line, but there was a tremor in his voice. He put her in mind of men in combat, whose panic was only held back by training and sheer force of will. The change in his demeanor shocked her. She had not expected terror, not from someone who'd faced not one but two master Jaffa in hand-to-hand combat without a second thought, at least according to Daniel.
She glanced over to her father, who shook his head and shrugged.
"You really had me going there for moment," Dean said, and his voice was soft and dangerous. Sam was taken aback, but it didn't seem to be directed at them. "I'd half thought- you even had me convinced that-" he broke off, licking his lips, unwilling to voice whatever he'd been about to say. Dean looked away from them and glared around the room, finally fixing his gaze on the ceiling.
"But you can forget it, you bastard. I'm not doing it. You hear me, you son of a bitch? I'm not playing. You can just fuck off." His expression was one of fury and fear and defiance intermingled, his tone so bitter it stung. After a few seconds, he shakily dropped back into his chair.
"Dean," she began, not sure what to say. But it didn't matter.
He crossed his arms, stared down at the table, and refused to say anything to them after that.
