Undeniable proof that authors do work faster with proper incentives: Thanks for the EIGHT amazing reviews mmkbrook. Here's a new chapter =) Also, thank you to these lovely reviewers: Pat, PIntheM, Kahuna, Lush, Robin and Dp.
Chapter 11: I'm With Stupid
Jack tried to avoid the look Carter was giving him from across the room, and sat himself back on the Ancient chair.
He knew her brain was going a hundred light years an hour (or, as she'd no doubt quantify it, 8.77x10^5 c) trying to figure out what was going on with him. She wasn't as easily distracted as the rest of her team, and unlike Teal'c she wouldn't be satisfied to wait for an explanation until Jack was ready to give one.
His unusual behavior was probably raising red flags in her head, and if he were a betting man he'd lay a good stake that she was contemplating how to go about confronting him about it. Only their recent issues were preventing her from speaking to him alone.
He wished he could be forthright with her, but a part of him felt the need to keep this side of himself from Carter. He knew it was all about protecting himself from further hurt. He'd given her so much of Jack O'Neill already and he wanted this part only for him. The part that was good enough to be with her, but was way past too late.
It was completely ridiculous, selfish and had no place in his command. This had nothing to do with their relationship, or lack there of. This was about the big, honking, picture. He couldn't expect Carter to be in the dark about something this big and expect her to follow his orders.
If only Doc Fraiser could explain everything to Sam, like she used to. She'd be the buffer he needed and he could continue acting dumb...
A contraption by one of the corners of the lab suddenly turned on.
"Ah, Jack. What did you touch?" Daniel asked, now ignoring the journal he'd been reading.
Jack raised his hands up. "Wasn't me."
"Who else could it be then? You're the one controlling all this- this stuff!"
"I'm telling you, Daniel, I didn't touch anything!"
"Sir!" Carter was pointing at the pulsing ring, a foot and a half in diameter, mounted on a pedestal, looking very much like a miniature Stargate,
"Ah, crap!" Jack cursed grumpily. "Everyone out. We don't know what that thing's gonna do and we're not sticking around to find out."
"Sir, we can't just leave," Carter protested. "There must be a way to deactivate the device. You've managed to figure out how to work everything else here, couldn't you try to figure out what it does or how to turn it off?"
He shook his head. "I wouldn't go that far, Carter. All I've done is the equivalent of turning on the lights."
She looked back at him with pleading eyes. "At least try, Sir."
Jack looked away in resignation. "Fine. But I want everyone else out of here now."
"I will not leave, O'Neill." Teal'c told him.
"I appreciate the sentiment, T, but I doubt I'll be needing you with this. If things go to hell, I'll need you and Danny to be there for Gracie."
Teal'c's expression softened and he gently bowed his head in Jack's direction. "It would be my honor."
The device was now pulsing harder, the lights on the circumference getting brighter.
"Jack?" Daniel's look was questioning.
"Go," He told them. "Carter-"
"I'm not leaving, Sir. So, don't bother."
She'd pulled out some sort of scanning device and was refusing to look at him.
Stubborn woman.
"It's emitting some sort of energy very similar to that of the Stargate. But I don't think it's creating a wormhole."
Something clicked in Jack's mind.
"Did we do any scans on the quantum mirror?"
Carter shook her head. "We still don't know much about how it works, much less how or where it draws power."
So much for that theory then.
Carter sighed in frustration and looked up from her device. "I'm sorry, sir, I've got nothing."
She stepped away from the Ancient device and approached him. "Maybe if you 'think' to the chair what the device is, it'll give us a clue," she suggested in desperation, glancing at the rapidly pulsing ring. "Please, sir, you have to at least try!"
He raised his eyebrows at her before finally closing his eyes. Right. the hell is that thing? More importantly, how the heck do you turn it off?
The response was immediate. The ring stopped pulsing, the lights replaced by what looked like the illuminated chevrons on the Stargate. Unlike the Stargate though, these lights all blinked on simultaneously, sending a blue wave of energy from the chevrons to the center of the circle, creating what appeared to be an event horizon.
Jack pushed off the control chair and cautiously approached the device, Carter stepping hesitantly behind him. Both of them considered the device for a moment, before Jack reached forward and stuck his hand in the center of the ring.
"Sir!" Sam stared at the back of his head in horror. His hand had disappeared into the watery surface of the event horizon.
He held her back with his other hand. "It's fine, Carter." He pulled back the hand that was inside the ring and raised up his wiggling fingers for her to see. "See? No damage."
Sam glared at him in reproach, but held her tongue. Sam Carter was too good of a soldier to utter anything disrespectful to a superior officer - even if he was being a complete and utter idiot. "Sir, did you feel anything when you put your hand through?"
"Cold," he replied quizzically. "Like sticking your hand inside a deep freeze. I also hit my hand on something when I pulled it back."
Sam frowned in consternation, and thought for a moment, before she suddenly left Jack's side and exited the laboratory. She came back half a minute later, bearing a part of the MALP that had come through with the science team.
Jack caught on to what she was doing, took the MALP visual recorder from her and plunged his hand back into the event horizon while holding the gadget.
Sam turned on the receiver. The visible light video feed coming through was all black, and she switched to IR. A grainy grey-tinged image appeared on the hand held monitor.
Sam and Jack frowned at the nondescript image being transmitted. Jack tilted the camera up to get a better view of what they were actually looking at, and almost dropped the camera when the image came into focus.
Jack grimaced in disgust. He wasn't particularly squeamish, it wasn't like he hadn't been around corpses before. He'd created enough of them first hand to last two lifetimes. But there was something about the situation that made his stomach slightly queasy. Maybe because he hadn't anticipated what he was sticking his idiotic hand into.
Sam's wariness increased at their discovery. The last time they'd defrosted someone from an Ancient tomb, they'd been afflicted by a virus that had forced Jack into being implanted with a symbiote. She refused to think further of the painful events that it later led to.
"Dammit," Jack swore under his breath. He pulled back his hand from the device, and set down the camera on top of a nearby bench. He gave Sam an apologetic look. "Sorry, Carter, but I think we're going to be stuck here for a little while longer."
"Teal'c. This is O'Neill," he said to the radio attached to his vest.
"Is everything alright, O'Neill?" Teal'c's voice came through loud and clear.
Jack walked over to the control panel located by the sliding doors at the entrance of the lab, and keyed in a command, effectively shutting him and Carter in the room. "Things are fine for now," he replied back over the radio. "But I need you to contact the SGC and assemble a hazmat team. Carter and I might have been exposed to a possible contagion. Make sure Doc Fraiser is with them."
Teal'c's reply was emotionless. "Understood. Teal'c out."
A few hours later, a temporary decontamination area had been set up at the entrance of the lab. Doctor Fraiser, wearing a hazmat suit, had taken their blood samples to test for possible contagions.
They had no idea how long it would take to isolate the virus if there was one, so it was decided to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Two cots, blankets, pillows, and MREs were delivered to them just as Janet had left with the blood samples.
Jack immediately avoided talking to Sam by occupying himself with the various gadgets littering the lab. They'd mutually agreed not to futz around with the control chair until they knew the results of the blood test. The device they had turned on was still lit up, but the watery surface had disappeared. Jack surmised it was in power saving mode, since the moment he came within half meter of the device the event horizon once again formed.
Sam chose to work on her laptop, making notes of her observations, to avoid the uneasy silence that permeated the room. Inside, she was in turmoil, hating the tense atmosphere that had not been present before her engagement to Pete. It used to be so much easier between them. Being in his company, just the two of them, had been a sought out time for her. Now, everything was colored with awkwardness.
When she looked at his face, all she could see were her regrets. It made her damned uncomfortable to know that he'd been with her double, shared something so intimate that she could only dream about. A part of her resented him for having experienced something that they should've experience first together.
Her thoughts had so deepened, that her fingers had stopped tapping on the keyboard, her mind so engrossed on her inner musings, her face reflecting the building anger she was feeling.
Jack observed the scowl on her face, thinking that whatever Carter was working on was seriously pissing her off. He decided to to keep out of her way, and remain silent in his side of the room.
She was the last person in the whole planet, Earth included, that he wanted to be stuck in a room with. Give him Teal'c or even Daniel any day, and he was just peachy. With a pissed off Carter? He'd rather be in Netu.
He was dreading the moment when she would eventually get it into her head that talking would be a good idea. He doubted he would ever be in the mood for it, and the topic she was sure to bring up was not something he was prepared to discuss… ever.
With Hammond's plans for retirement coming along nicely, he figured he would get his wish soon enough. With several thousand miles dividing them, any thoughts of discussions would be a distant memory. Carter would get married to her cop, and he and Gracie could move on with their lives together in D.C..
He would miss his best friends, especially the Spacemonkey and his Jaffa brother from another mother, and he if he were completely honest with himself, he would also miss Carter terribly. But as he'd learned from losing his son, time and short term memory healed the surface wounds, if not the unyielding scars underneath, and he had to content himself with that.
If he could just survive this confinement with Carter without revealing his true feelings, and studiously avoid having to discuss her own feelings, then the upcoming months would be bearable for all concerned. The two of them would never have to cross paths again unless absolutely necessary. Once she was forever tethered to the Detective, their command relationship would be the only thing between them. If he was really lucky, any residual infatuation he had for her would have vanished, and he could think of her fondly instead of being constantly confronted with the vice like grip twisting his heart at the very thought of her giving herself fully to the cop.
There were nights though, nights where his thoughts would turn dark, and he felt the loss of her so keenly that it took everything inside him not to yell and shout at the hell he was living. The only thing that saved him was that he was used to agony, the kind that never really relinquished its painful hold.
He'd accepted long ago that this was punishment for all the wrongs he'd committed in his life. It was a perpetual purgatory on Earth that he was sure would follow him to the next world. The biggest of these sins was his culpability in Charlie's death, something for which he was sure he would never ever forgiven. If there was truth to rumors of a greater being, a deity of all consuming power, then he'd accepted that he was starting his eternal penance earlier than most.
His torment was all but assured until Kawalsky and Fraiser had waltzed back from the grave and presented him with his second chance. Suddenly, his life felt like it had meaning again; one look into his beautiful little girl's eyes, and his soul told him that there had to be a benign power up there doling out Get out of Jail Free cards.
Because of Grace, the darker moments were becoming less and less frequent. If he couldn't have the real Carter, he had the next best thing - tangible proof of the potential of what they might have been.
After hours of being treated to the O'Neill brand of silence, Sam lost the will to hold her tongue any longer. The monosyllabic exchanges were driving her up the wall. He was deliberately avoiding her, and it irked her to bits that she was being treated this way.
What had she done to him that was so bad? He'd been the one who had constantly reminded her to get a life. He'd made no indication that he was still interested in her after Daniel had returned. When she'd woken up from her coma, he'd corrected her familiarity with a peculiar look. He was the one who'd wished her luck with Pete, and allowed her to explain to her boyfriend what she actually did under the mountain. When she'd given him one last chance to stop her from accepting Pete's ring, he'd avoided giving her a straight answer to what she was really asking, and dammit, he was the one who'd slept with her double behind her back with full knowledge that he might impregnate her!
He was the one who should be apologizing, not the other way around.
Sam immediately paused at her train of thought, and realized what she'd just inadvertently admitted to herself. Her sudden need to speak out all but disappeared.
Guilt. That persistent gnawing at the back of her mind, the one she'd become expert at ignoring away, was guilt.
Whatever Jack's feeling were for her, she had given her heart to him a long time ago, and when she'd sought out someone else to fill the void that belonged solely to Jack, she had effectively betrayed the love she had for him.
She could make all the excuses in the world, try to put all the blame on his silence, but in the end, she'd been the one to give up and decide not to wait for him. Rightly or wrongly, it had been her choice to find someone else. She'd been the one who'd made the move to end whatever it was that was between them. What she was witnessing was the dirge and funeral of what might have been, and it was a sobering sight.
A subdued pair of officers greeted Janet late the next afternoon when she'd returned to check on her patients. The PCR and viral antibody test were still in the lab, and they wouldn't know the results for a few more hours.
They knew from past experience with the Ancient virus, that it was very aggressive and attacked the immune system rapidly. The incubation period was short, and if they had been exposed then they would begin to show symptoms and the antibody test should immediately confirm the presence of the virus.
Jack volunteered to have the physical exam first, the ever present penlight once again invading his eyeball with eye-watering consistency. "To think I almost missed these lovely moments together, Doc," Jack couldn't help but tease Janet. "What was I thinking?"
"That it's much better than the large needle currently waiting for your ass back in the infirmary?" Janet retorted with a deadpan expression on her face.
Despite her moroseness, Sam couldn't help but laugh out loud at the exchange. She'd missed Janet so much, and hearing this replica or her, almost made her forget the past year had ever happened.
"Watch it, Carter," Jack reminded Sam. "This same laser pointer of death and a very similar needle is waiting in your very near future." He grinned at her, his devastating smile that transformed his already handsome features into a breathtaking one, so rare in their appearances, that it broke something inside of her.
Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, because the grin slowly slipped from his lips, to be replaced by a concerned look.
Sam turned away, unable to look at him any longer without embarrassing herself and bursting into torrents of tears.
After Janet finished examining Sam, the Doc told them she would be going back to the SGC to check on the progress of the labs. Once she'd disappeared through through the decon tent, the silence continued anew.
The light teasing Jack had indulged in abruptly vanished as if it never occurred, and they were back to avoiding each other at all cost.
Sam pretended to work on her laptop while all she could think about was confronting Jack once and for all. She knew the moment they were out of this particular room, she wouldn't get the chance again to address her issues with him. With all the locked doors in their relationship, she only had this one window of opportunity.
Before she could stop herself, Sam forged on with her heart on her sleeve, ready for him to rip it out and stomp on it with his combat boots. "Is there any chance at all that our friendship could come out of this intact?" She stared hard at his shuttered expression, begging silently for him to open up even a little.
"By this you mean…?" Jack was careful to maintain a baffled look on his face.
Sam ignored it and continued to drill him with a serious look. "Don't. Just don't."
"Carter-"
"For once, just give me a straight answer," she interrupted him. "You keep saying that you're a simple guy, that must make me a complete idiot then, because I can't get a read on you."
"You're not an idiot," Jack softly replied back.
"And neither are you, sir!"
"Sir," Jack sighed loudly. "That's the root of the problem, Carter, right there. Until you can stop calling me that out loud and in your mind, we can never be friends."
"Are you saying that you don't feel anything for me?" The words felt bitter coming out her mouth.
"I'm saying that as long as I'm 'sir', I don't have the luxury of feelings, towards you or anyone else under my command," he told her firmly.
"So, I'm just one of the guys then. One of your men," she clarified in a steady cold voice. "What you said four years ago about caring about me more than you were supposed to-"
"I meant it, Carter," he said in a gentle voice. "I may not be able to say it, or allowed to feel it, but I meant it all the same." He dropped the Ancient book he'd been holding whilst they talked on the counter, and approached her silently, taking a seat next to her on her cot.
Even with a couple of feet separating them, she still felt the warmth she'd always associated with his nearness.
"But it doesn't change anything," he continued. "I can't give you what you need, and you deserve a life before your rank is the only thing left in your life. I may not like it, but unless our circumstances change, the only thing that I can give you is a promotion and a pat on the back."
Her ready reply died in her throat. She hadn't really expected a declaration of love, and she didn't get one. The closest thing she would ever get from him apparently were forced confessions. He hadn't asked her about her own feeling towards him. Not when rank still stood firmly between them. "Suppose I quit. What then?"
He stared at her for a moment, then looked away. "You would still be getting married, and once you are, any sort of friendship between us would be untenable."
His answer completely took the wind out her sails. While they had been discussing feelings, she'd all but forgotten the most tangible barrier that separated them.
He stood up and returned to his previous position. His departure signalled the end of their talk. She wouldn't be getting anything out of him that day.
There was still so much left unsaid, she still had so many questions about Grace, about his odd behavior, but she'd lost her courage after his grim reminder of what awaited her at home. She'd given him no assurances with regards to her feelings for him, and he'd asked for none. If she still had any spine left in her, she would have asked why he hadn't asked. Instead, she felt weariness suffusing her mind and body, all her courage walking away with him when he'd stood up to distance himself from her.
What Sam had still failed to realize about Jack was that he was a man of action. To him, her actions spoke louder than any words she could ever utter. Her engagement to the cop said more than enough. It more than convinced him that whatever feelings she previously had for him, were murky, and purely platonic at best. Any lingering emotion she still had was probably remnants of the past, brought on by the appearance of his daughter.
Daniel had impressed upon him how hurt Sam was by his decision to keep her existence from Grace a secret. He sincerely hoped that the reason she hadn't asked was because she understood the circumstances of Grace's birth had very little to do with his feelings for her.
After another twenty-four hours had passed without either of them displaying any symptoms, Janet arrived to inform them that the PCR and antibodies tests came back negative for any viruses, much to everyone's relief.
"I think that, with proper precautions, we should be able to remove the body from stasis and find out a little bit more about what happened to her," Janet suggested to both of them.
Dead bodies fell squarely within her expertise, and a frisson of excitement had gone through her at the thought of examining such a rare specimen that could provide possible insight into their human ancestry.
Jack was replacing his vest after having taken it off during their confinement. "Do what you have to do, Doc. We don't have the resources to keep people here indefinitely. If you can get any clue from the body of what it is they were doing here, it would save a lot of time."
"Did you find anything from the notes Daniel said you were translating?" Janet ventured to ask.
"Nah," Jack shook his head. "Just a bunch of mathematical formulae and scientific notations that made no sense to me."
"Maybe if you translated them for me, sir, I can take a stab at it?" Sam volunteered gingerly. The footing of their personal relationship was wobbly as ever, but she was adamant that their professional relationship would not suffer as a result.
He looked up from fastening his tac vest. "Sure, Carter. But right now, let's get suited up and retrieve that body for our very eager Doc," he flashed Janet a mischievous smile.
Once they had a portable decon stretcher and EV suits on, Jack activated the camera to get a better look at what they were about to remove from what they assumed was a stasis device. He saw that the body had been placed on some sort of shelf that could be easily pulled out along with the body.
He gave the shelf an experimental tug, and found that it easily glided towards him without much effort. He turned to Sam and Janet. "Get that decon stretcher ready."
Janet jumped at his command, and helped Sam pull the gurney over to the mouth of the ring. Jack moved aside and pulled more forcefully at the shelf and it exited the liquid surface of the device, bringing along the body which it contained.
"My god, she looks remarkably well preserved," Janet couldn't help but exclaim. She could only guess as to the age of the body, but based on what they knew about the Ancients, the body of the woman before them could easily be millions of years old.
They quickly worked to seal the Ancient corpse into the decon stretcher, safe to be transferred back to the SGC. Janet hurriedly pushed the gurney to the decon chamber to eliminate any rogue contagion that might have accompanied the body, benign or not. Every moment the body spent out of the freezer hastened its decomposition. It needed to be in a controlled environment similar to the chamber which they had removed it from.
With Fraiser on her way back to the base, Jack ordered that only essential personnel be allowed in the lab until they could determine that there were no contagions present. They had to wait for Fraiser's analysis of the body to be certain. All of them would have to keep their EV suits on to continue their work within the lab.
Jack had wasted no time in getting back on the Ancient command chair, methodically searching for any details as to what had happened to the woman, and the real purpose of the structure besides he's initial findings. He somehow doubted that the Ancients kept retreats for the sole purpose of relaxing. They didn't seem the type from the very limited number of their species he'd encountered.
After close to an hour of fruitless searching, he'd all but given up finding anything of use. While the bits and pieces of technology they had found were of tremendous value to Doctor Lee's team, the ever elusive weapons cache that would bring a permanent end to their skirmishes with the Goa'uld still eluded them.
"Anything?" Daniel approached him once he'd deactivated the chair.
"I think whoever ran this place wiped anything of value from the database. There's some star charts that were mildly interesting, and some historical data that you'd probably salivate over, but no honking space gun," Jack said regretfully.
Daniel's eyes widened at the very mention of 'historical'. "Can you download that data?"
Jack shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat, Daniel."
The archaeologist rolled his eyes. "Has it occurred to you that it was an Ancient tablet that lead us here in the first place? You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss that historical data."
"It'll probably lead us to another one of these places with more historical data, and no weapons to speak of," Jack lamented with a shake of his head.
Daniel was about to reply, when Jonas wearing his bulky EV suit, clumsily rushed through the decon tent. He was panting and slightly out of breath by the time he got to their side.
"Both of you have to get back to the SGC," Jonas managed to get out. With a wide eyed look, he continued. "The woman… She's awake."
The mystery deepens. The angst continues.
To answer your question Kahuna: I think Sam is so used to being the one clued up on things, that this sudden role reversal throws up red flags for her. Jack suddenly knows more about something than she does? He never did explain to anyone what the Asgard left behind in his mind. In canon, it was understood that the Asgard removed everything, and he's just plain old Jack. Obviously in this fic, Jack is only pretending that this is so, and the Asgard did more than just clone him, they left certain things behind. Future chapters will explain what ;-) Thank you for your subtle reminder regarding PD. I'm still in the midst of writing the next chapter. It's taking longer, because it's going to be a longer chapter. Hopefully it's worth the wait.