Part X

Cassie sat in the back seat in the cab of Jack's pickup truck, not listening to him rant. She had tuned out most of what he was saying the second time through, along with what her mother kept repeating. Yes, she was a bad person for sneaking out on her own at night. It was a dangerous thing for her to do. All sorts of bad things could have happened to her. Yada, yada, yada.

It was just too much. "Faith agrees with you, Jack."

That seemed to take him by surprise. "What?"

"Faith told me the same thing," said Cassie. "She said I wasn't ready to be out on my own at night…though she seemed to be more worried that I'd run into a vampire I couldn't handle, than just some random perv."

"There's no such thing as vampires!" said Jack.

"Yeah, and those little grey aliens on the cover of Weekly World News aren't real either," shot back Cassie.

Jack sputtered behind the wheel of his truck. "This is different."

Her mother had been blessedly silent so far, in the front seat beside Jack. She had let him take over the ranting and raving about how irresponsible she had been by sneaking out last night. He had only been slightly mollified to learn that she had come clean with her mother before he had arrived on the scene. He had listened while she told him about what Faith'd had to tell her, and then he'd announced that they were all going to Harris and Russell's hotel.

Jack's truck pulled into the hotel parking lot. "Maybe you should wait out here," suggested Cassie, after they had stopped. "You can listen in to anything they say. Faith said that they wanted to talk to Mom. She didn't say anything about bringing anyone else along."

"No way!" said Jack. "It's bad enough that you talked me into doing this! I'm not going to get caught sitting out in a parking lot if something happens in there!"

"If they wanted to do something to me, they'd have done it last night!" said Cassie.

"Yeah! When you were out of the house on your own!" said Jack. "I'm not letting you out of my sight again till you're fifty!"

Cassie sighed in resignation. "Yes Jack."

Sam was waiting for them in the parking lot. Jack had called her before they'd left the Fraiser house. He'd wanted to call Teal'c and Jonas too, but decided against it. They were in the base, and couldn't sneak out without anyone noticing. Jack had been reluctant to even involve Sam. They'd been ordered to back off from Harris and Russell. they could both be court martialed if they got caught, but there was no way he was doing this without any backup.

He handed over the receiver for her bug to Carter. "I want you to listen in. Call the cavalry if anything goes wrong."

"Sir, we were ordered to leave these people alone."

"Which is why it's just you and me here now," said Jack. "If they're telling the truth, and they just want to talk: no harm,no foul. If they've got anything else in mind, I'm ready to face the consequences, after we get Cassie away from them."

Carter placed the ear-bud into her ear. "Yes Sir."

Jack reached between Janet's and Cassie's heads to rap his knuckles on the hotel door. There was a slight pause before the door opened.

Harris stood in the open doorway. His eye moved quickly between Cassie and Janet before they settled on him. He held out his arms—hands close together, as if ready to have a set of handcuffs slapped on his wrists. "Here to arrest us again?"

Jack wanted to smack him. "We're here to talk."

Harris lowered his hands, and stepped back from the door, eying him suspiciously. He didn't invite them in; he didn't say anything: he just stood back from the door. After a pause, Janet and Cassie stepped into the room, and Jack followed them.

Jack's eyes scanned the room as he entered it, looking for enemies, even though he knew that there couldn't be any here—they'd had this room under constant surveillance for days, after all—but he hadn't survived this long by taking anything for granted. There was no one here except for Harris, and Russell, who was stretched out on one of the beds watching TV. The rumpled blankets showed that Harris had been using the other bed.

Russell used the remote to turn off the television. "Hi Cassie. I see you brought friends."

"Uh, yeah," said Cassie. "This is my mom, Dr. Janet Fraiser, and our friend Jack O'Neill. Uh, mom, this is Faith, and ah…?"

"Xander," said Harris. "Nice to meet you Dr. Fraiser." He held out his hand to shake Janet's. "We've met Colonel O'Neill."

Russell's eyes were on Cassie. "Are you sure you want to involve him?" Her head flicked in Jack's direction.

"Yeah," said Cassie. "I've know him ever since…a long time. I trust him."

Russell cast a quick look at Harris, and he shrugged. "We can't keep her from talking to him after they leave; he might as well hear it first hand," he said.

"Alright Colonel: what do you want to know?" asked Russell.

Jack listened while Harris and Russell repeated the same spiel that Cassie had told him Russell had given her last night, though as he questioned them, he couldn't help noticing that Russell got awfully vague about what she herself had done over much of the last four years. He couldn't help noticing that even though Harris and Russell said that they had first met while he was still in high school, he didn't have anything to say about what part she had to play in the destruction of Sunnydale High. They both hemmed and hawed around his questions about that, and the next three years of her life.

Harris finally cut his questions off. "Look, you're military: you know all about 'need to know.' You don't need to know what Faith was doing!"

"You're asking me to take an awful lot on faith, from someone I never met until this week!" said Jack.

"No more than Teal'c did," said Cassie quietly.

Jack's gaze snapped to her. "What?"

"He's told me about it…the leap of faith he made, to trust you. He gave up everything, his whole life, based only on the word of a man he didn't know. I'm asking the same from you."

Jack looked at her, his first meeting with Teal'c playing through his mind. How had he looked to the First Prime of Apophis? A prisoner, stripped of his weapons. Weapons that the Jaffa had looked on with the scorn that European soldiers armed with muskets had held for bows and arrows.

But in that moment, Teal'c had believed in him. He had seen someone who would be a worthy ally. A fellow soldier. He might not have the strength of arms, but he had the strength of character needed to carry the fight through to the end. The Tau'ri weapons might have seemed laughable to the Goa'uld, but weapons alone didn't win wars.

"You're asking me?" asked Jack. "You may be making a leap of faith here, but you're asking us to leap off that bridge after you."

"We didn't invite you to take any leaps, soldier boy," said Russell. "In fact, if you want to take a leap, you can take a flying leap off—"

"Faith!" said Harris.

Russell glared at him, but she shut up. Jack decided that it was time to seem to be conciliatory. "I'm just sayin', your story is a lot to take in. You're asking us to take a lot on faith here."

"Would it help if we had the army confirm our story?" asked Harris.

"The army?" asked Jack, trying to sound innocent, though this was the direction that he'd hoped the conversation would go.

"Don't play dumb with us, Colonel," said Harris. "We know that you've already met Major Finn."

"He didn't tell me a whole lot," said Jack. "In fact, he didn't tell me anything. He just told me to stay away from you."

"And yet, here you are," said Russell.

Jack glared at her. "When it comes to my friends, there are some orders I don't take well."

"Which earns you some points with me," said Harris.

Jack shifted his glare to him. "So…you were saying that the army would confirm your story?"

"They've agreed to talk to Dr. Fraiser here," said Xander. "Don't know if they'll talk to you."

"One way to find out," said Jack.

Harris looked at him for a bit. Jack found something unnerving about that look coming from that one eye of his, but it was a look that he knew well. He'd seen it in special forces veterans, and some of the members of SG teams, after they had survived a few hairy missions. There was a confidence there, and a look of evaluation: measuring Jack to see if he was worthy. Jack gave him the same look back.

They shared that look for several seconds, and then they both nodded at each other, in mutual acceptance, and understanding. The understanding of what each of them recognized in the other. It was similar to the understanding that he and Teal'c had reached in that moment on Chulak. Not the same, but he and Harris both recognized the warrior in the other. The man who would fight to the end for his comrades. It was a look you could see in both a friend, or a foe. Whether friend or foe was yet to be decided.

The moment passed, and Harris shrugged. "It may be too late to talk to anyone tonight. It's after nine in Washington."

"You won't know if you don't call," said Jack.

Harris pulled a card from his pocket, and a cell phone from another. He scowled a bit at Jack before he dialled a number he read from the card. He waited a few seconds. "Uh, hi. This is Xander Harris, calling for Sam Finn. Is she in?" He seemed to wince a bit when he realized that had rhymed. "Yeah, I can hold." He sat quietly for a few moments, and then started humming. Jack recognized the tune, but he couldn't quite remember the name of the song: something from the 70s; it was nagging at the back of his head. He glanced toward Russell, and saw that she was looking annoyed. Harris could see it too. "Sorry, I've got 'hold' music going here. I just thought I'd share my— Oh! Hi Sam! It's Xander! Riley tells me congratulations are in order! … Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet? … "

Jack rolled his eyes while he listened to Harris go on about the impending birth of a new addition to the Finn family. He suspected that Harris was only doing this to annoy him. After a while he made a 'move it along' gesture with his hand at him.

"So, Sam, has Riley talked to you about getting clearance for you to talk to Major Fraiser about Slayer Stuff?" he finally asked. "Okay, good. Is it possible for you to tell the same things to a Colonel O'Neill? … Yeah, that's the one. … No, he doesn't need to know anything about your guys' ops, just confirm that what we're telling him is true. … Okay, I'm going to put you on the speaker."

Harris had a speakerphone attachment that he connected to his phone. He set them down on the table in the room when he was done. "Okay Sam, can you hear me now?" he asked when he was done.

"I hear you fine, Xander," said a female voice from the phone.

"Okay," said Harris. "We've got a few people here. Let's start with Faith. Has Riley told you about her?"

"He's mentioned her," said the phone. Jack didn't think she sounded happy.

Faith waved at the phone—which seemed like a pointless gesture from Jack's point of view. "Hi Sam."

"We also have our new Slayer, Cassie Fraiser. Say 'Hi' Cassie."

"Hi Cassie," said Cassie.

The phone laughed. Jack thought it sounded a little forced, but not too much. "Hi Cassie."

"Next we have Cassie's mom, Major Doctor Fraiser…or is that Doctor Major Fraiser?"

"Either will do," said Janet.

"I hear you," said the phone. "I'm a 'Captain Doctor' myself."

"Oh, yeah? What speciality?" asked Janet.

"I started out as a GP," said the phone, "but after I joined up with the military, I switched over to trauma. Say, you wouldn't be the Dr. Janet Fraiser who wrote that article on the cross species migration of viruses that was published by /The New England Journal of Medicine/ a couple of months ago would you?"

Jack looked at Janet. "Yeah, that was me," she said.

"That was fascinating work," said the phone. "I'd like to get a closer look at some of your raw data. It could have major implications in the transmission of diseases, across demon species."

"Aht!" said Jack.

"Sam, that was Colonel O'Neill," said Harris.

"Nice to hear from you Colonel," said the phone.

He had to stop thinking of it that way. There was a person on the other end, and now he had something he could call her. "Hello Captain Finn."

"So, you want to hear about demons," said Finn.

"I don't want to," said Jack.

"No one in their right minds wants to," said Finn, with a chuckle.

"Look," said Jack. "I've heard a lot of nonsense, so far, from Russell, and Harris. I don't want to hear more of it from you!"

"Demons are real, Colonel O'Neill," said Finn. "I wish to God that they weren't, but wishing can't make things come true."

"Ah, actually…" Harris saw the looks cast his way. "Never mind. You were saying?"

"Once upon a time, I was a simple doctor, working with the Peace Corps in Central America, bringing modern medical help to the people living there," said Finn. "Then one night, my clinic was attacked by these things. Most of my patients, and my staff, were killed before a squad of soldiers came in and eliminated the things attacking us, along with my illusions. That was the night that I discovered that the world wasn't built the way I wanted. There were things out there that weren't explained by science."

"Aren't explained by science yet," said Janet.

There was a brief pause before Finn responded. "You're right. Sooner or later, science is going to have to address the supernatural. 'Supernatural' is an oxymoron. Everything that exists in the universe is natural. It is part of nature. Science needs to develop theories that take all of the data into account. It can't just ignore facts because they don't fit in its current theories about the way the world works."

"Like demons," said Jack.

"Demons, magic, Slayers," said Finn. "Science doesn't have a good theory yet that accounts for them, but they're all real."

"Have you talked to Willow recently?" asked Harris.

"No, why?" asked Finn.

"She's probably the best person to talk to about how science and magic mesh," said Harris. "I doubt if anyone understands both of them as well as she does."

"Ah, we seem to have wandered away from our main topic here," said Jack. "What's all this got to do with Cassie?"

"Okay, a long time ago a group of mages, called the Shadow Men, decided that they needed a warrior against the demons," said Harris. "They took a girl, and imbued her with the power of a demon, creating the First Slayer…"