Author's Note: I've been away for a while (far too long!) but I'm back and moving toward the completion of this story. I didn't mean to leave everyone hanging about what would eventually happen to Daniel and his new sarcophagus addiction. Our favorite archaeologist can't seem to catch a break!

Thanks so much to Pettygrew for the outstanding beta - Also for diligently re-reading the first 10 Chapters to make sure Chapter 11 made sense. And who kept egging me on with double espressos to stay up late and crank out the next chapter!

On to Chapter 11!

On board the Goa'uld vessel Baal's first prime approached his master cautiously. Depending on what mood he was in his master could be receptive to interruptions or murder ously annoyed.

"My Lord!" He finally announced himself, bowing his head respectfully.

"These two were found trying to sneak their way on board past our sentries." Moving aside he revealed two prisoners held by his Jaffa, a man and a woman.

Annoyed at the interruption Ba'al swung around fiercely, but almost immediately his expression changed to mild surprise.

"Excellent." he intoned. "Excellent."

Jack's head was bowed, his eyes fixed on Daniel's glasses, which he turned over carefully in his hands. Ever since they'd found them at the temple, Jack had held onto them for safe-keeping. Now it looked like Danny didn't need them anymore. Just like before when he was under the influence of that thing. How many times had he been in that machine today? Three or Four? In less than 24 hours?

If he succeeded in reaching the other sarcophagus --. Jack was afraid to complete that thought. But he realized he couldn't avoid it forever. If Daniel succeeded in reaching the other sarcophagus and using it, they would most likely lose their Daniel, forever.

There was something about the sarcophagus that affected humans and Goa'uld for that matter, on a basic level with prolonged exposure. Yes, it healed their injuries and illnesses. But it also messed with their sense of morality, literally obliterating it. It corrupted their minds giving them a false sense of grandiose omnipotence. Every so often they would need to renew this effect, injured or not until finally it would become an addiction.

Back on Shyla's planet Daniel said he felt better than he ever had before. He said he felt like he could do anything. It had to be absolutely intoxicating to both the Goa'uld and the host alike.

Daniel had done a lot of things he came to deeply regret as a result of his addiction. For days afterward he had apologized profusely to all of them for what he had done. And for weeks he was withdrawn from the team, keeping to himself mostly and not speaking unless spoken to. Barely eating and sleeping.

He had been through so much Jack decided to give him his space. Lord knows he'd probably had enough of Jack's face while he was going through the withdrawals. There was no way he was going to leave his best friend to go through that alone. So with Hammond's permission, Jack had a bed set up for himself in Daniel's quarters. It had been a rough time for both of them. After the return trip from Shyla's planet Daniel began to draw away from them.

Jack had been this close to taking Frasier aside to discuss treatments for depression when Daniel seemed to start pulling himself together. Everyone including Hammond had been relieved when Daniel began acting like his old self again. All of a sudden, O'Neill understood something else with startling clarity.

That phrase the Goa'uld threw around so carelessly. Nothing of the host survives.

With each exposure to the sarcophagus by the Goa'uld parasite, the host mind would also be affected by the power of the machine. With the host's morality slowly being eroded away they would fight less and less. Until eventually their identity would be swallowed up by the Goa'uld's far stronger maniacal personality and goals.

The host would more or less willingly go along with whatever the Goa'uld wanted so long as he got a taste of the sarcophagus every now and again. The thought made him sick to his stomach and he felt it lurch in revulsion.

"O'Neill, are you alright?" Teal'c asked, openly concerned for his friend.

"I'm okay." Jack answered, quickly swallowing back his repulsing thoughts. Whatever it took, they weren't going to let that happen to Danny.

"Let's go get our people."

Daniel and Sam had been dragged from before Ba'al and roughly thrown into a cell together when neither one of them would supply answers to his questions.

Daniel didn't utter a sound during the questioning. He just kept his head down, eyes trained on the ground in front of him, but Sam could see him trembling if ever so slightly, and it was getting worse. His face was flushed and small beads of perspiration began forming along his forehead. Sam wasn't even sure if he was aware of what was going on.

Following Daniel's lead Sam refused to speak as well. Ba'al for his part maintained an air of amusement. And no wonder, Sam thought. All he has to do is wait, and the Colonel and Teal'c will probably show up looking for us. He was going to use them as bait.

O'Neill and Teal'c warily made their way through the corridors of the Serpent Sun God's ship. They had taken out the guards at the rings and managed to get on board without being seen.

Any minute now Jack expected to hear alarms because of the missing guards. But they had been exploring the lower levels of the ship without any interference for about an hour now. It hadn't been as hard as Jack thought. If anything, it had been a little too easy.

"T?"

"I concur, O'Neill."

"I didn't say anything yet."

"You believe that we are strolling into a snare."

O'Neill blinked. "Uh, it's walking into a trap."

"Is that not what I have just said?"

O'Neill paused for a moment and said, "Indeed."

It was the Jaffa's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"And yes," the Colonel continued, "I do think we're walking into a trap."

"We have no choice if we are to stop Daniel Jackson and Major Carter from reaching the sarcophagus."

"I know."

The two men continued on in silence meticulously checking each corridor and each room. Cautiously they rounded the next corridor, O'Neill taking the lead. Abruptly an arm from a hidden alcove hooked O'Neill's neck and chest as he passed by, dragging him backward into the darkness.

Kicking and struggling, O'Neill struck out against his attacker.

Teal'c immediately rushed forward, pulling the struggling O'Neill away from the strong figure and made ready to stun the attacker. And then they both froze.

O'Neill broke out of his stunned surprise enough to choke out one word.

"Jacob!?"

Daniel was confused. The woman was talking to him again, her words sounding distorted and unintelligible. Her voice was growing louder now and more insistent. He pressed his hands against his head trying to block her voice out and ward off the beginnings of a massive headache.

He regarded her momentarily, uncomprehendingly, and then shut his eyes tight against the pain in his skull. The pain kept growing and it wouldn't go away. Nothing could make it go away, except the sarcophagus. He knew there was one here. There had to be.

Deep down he knew that he shouldn't go near it. He knew that it was supposed to repulse him. But he couldn't help himself. It was such a raw need that he dare not ignore it. He felt that if he didn't get to the sarcophagus soon, he would die.

"Daniel? Daniel? Can you hear me?" Sam was trying to get through to her friend but it wasn't working. He didn't utter a word. He stared at her in such a plaintive way it made her heart ache. Then he simply turned away from her and curled up into a little ball in the corner of the cell, knees drawn up to his chest, rubbing tiredly at his temples.

Sighing, Carter took up a similar position close to Daniel but not too close. She didn't want to appear threatening in any way. Not after what happened at the med center. Anyway, it seemed all they could do now was wait.

As she rested near Daniel, Sam's thoughts turned inward to a time when her friend was addicted to the sarcophagus on Shyla's planet. At the time, they had only known each other a short while. But they had become fast friends who enjoyed spending time together.

Once he became addicted, however, he behaved like a completely different person. He had been so cold to her that day in her lab. She remembered it like it was yesterday. The words he so carelessly flung at her had really hurt, worse than she let on. She could still after all these years feel their sting.

Afterward, Daniel had been so remorseful, always apologizing. Then he quickly became withdrawn, spending much of his time on base alone with his research. He had to be coaxed into spending any time at all with them outside of offworld missions. Sam thought he wasn't sleeping well because dark circles were beginning to form underneath his eyes.

One day, she invited him over for dinner making him believe that she needed him to translate some old letters she found that belonged to her Swedish great-grandparents. She felt guilty for the deception but it was worth it just to get him away from the SGC.

"Daniel, I know you've been avoiding the team, lately," she'd finally gotten up the courage to say. "But you don't have to. We're your friends. We just want to help you if you'd let us."

She could literally see the blood drain from his face. Oh, no, she thought, I hope he doesn't bolt!

Putting the letters down on the coffee table and turning away from her to gaze intently at the floor, Daniel spoke very softly, "Sam, you can't begin to know how ashamed I feel. How can any of you stand to look at me and work with me after I let you all suffer down in those mines? I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror every day.

"Daniel, how can you say that" Sam countered, instinctively reaching out to touch his arm.

"Sam, I know I messed up, big time. Back there on P3R - 636, I really did think that I was handling things and that I was in control. And through it all, I can't remember ever once thinking about how my actions were affecting the team. Not even once. You all were rotting away in that mine along with the other slaves and where was I? Enjoying myself at the palace with Shyla. What kind of person does that make me?"

"It wasn't you. You were drugged and deliberately misled into thinking that you were helping us. Shyla took advantage of you and that wasn't your fault." Seeing that he didn't quite believe her, Sam pressed on.

"She knew exactly what the sarcophagus was doing to you and she kept putting you in it anyway! If there's anyone to blame, it's her!" Sam said firmly. "Please don't blame yourself. We don't."

At this Daniel did turn toward her, but still not directly looking her in the eye.

"Do you think that Share will forgive me, for betraying her?" So that had been weighing on his mind, too. He felt that he had betrayed his missing wife.

"Daniel," Sam reached over to squeeze his hand, "I know she will."

Silent tears brimmed over in his eyes. "Oh, Daniel!" Sam reached over and put her arms around him and held him while he cried. After a few moments, Daniel drew back, swiping at his eyes with the back of a hand. "You, uh, you didn't need any help translating those letters from your great-grandparents, did you?" he asked, giving her a nervous little half smile.

"Are you kidding?" Sam smiled back, "I've known how to read and write Svenska since I was three."

"Really?" Daniel raised both eyebrows at this. "You know, Svenska is a derivative of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era…"

They continued like that late into the night, just talking. Eventually, the conversation circled back around to the naquadah on Shyla's planet and the sarcophagus. But this time Daniel was ready to talk and he seemed to work some things out as he opened up more about incident. As Daniel talked, Sam smiled to herself. Everything was going to be alright. And in the days following he seemed to be on the road to being his old self again.

His old self. Sam thought about that for a moment. Daniel seemed like an entirely different person when he was under the influence of the sarcophagus both the first time and today. But this time something was different. She just couldn't seem to put her finger on what it was.

"Oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed. All at once it was very clear to her what could be causing the sarcophagus to mal-function. She moved closer to Daniel and checked that he was ok. He was sleeping, occasionally mumbling something unintelligible.

"I hope I'm wrong," she thought to herself, "but if I'm right, we could all be sitting on a ticking time bomb."

"Take it easy Jack!" Jacob cried, rubbing his jaw where a nice bruise was beginning to form.

"What are you doing here!?" Jack countered unapologetically, adrenaline still pumping hard.

"Selmac and I have been on a covert mission for the past several weeks trying to obtain information about a new system lord, the Sun Serpent. He has been wrecking havoc throughout this part of the galaxy for some time now gathering slaves for himself. The information we obtained led us here and I was able to pass myself off as an interested ally. However, Ba'al arrived recently and had him executed. Apparently he was acting in Ba'al's interests and things got bad between them."

"Ba'al?" Jack was still trying to catch up.

"Yes, Jack. We were about to get out of dodge when we heard about the recent escaped Tauri prisoners and the subsequent capture of two more."

"Daniel and Carter."

"You're walking into a trap, Jack. They want you to find them. How do you think you got this far?"

"I'm not gonna leave my people behind!"

"How do you think I feel? That's my daughter he's holding prisoner doing God knows what to!"

"I know! I know exactly what he's going to do to them. Which makes it even more important that we find them before-" he paused, suddenly out of breath. He was going to say "Before he kills them over and over again." Instead he said, "Before he does to them what he did to me."

Jack's head was lowered and he was trying to get a handle on his breathing, but he wasn't having much success. Then he felt Teal'c's strong hand clasp his shoulder.

Jacob's hand clasped his other shoulder. "I'm sorry, Jack. I wasn't thinking."

"Look. I want Daniel and Sam back as much as you do but we can't just rush in there half-cocked. We need to think this through and come up with a plan."

Jack took another deep breath and glanced at Teal'c then Jacob. "Okay. I'm listening."

At last, Jackson stirred. A quick glance toward the woman showed that she was fast asleep. The lull in activity outside their cell seemed to indicate that those onboard were also engaging in rest or meditation at this time. Now was a good time for him to make his move.

Slowly rising from the floor he approached the door's control panel. Pulling off the cover with one fluid motion, he reached inside. Heedless of the glowing power crystals inside the panel, he thrust his fist to the back of the encasement, shattering them. Crackling electrical energy briefly surrounded Daniel's body, yet he did not fall. The door slid silently aside.

Turning, he headed out the door and swiftly moved down the corridor to begin his desperate search for the sarcophagus.

A few seconds later a blonde head peaked out the doorway. Making sure not to be heard, Sam carefully crept down the corridor in pursuit of Daniel.

"So we're agreed," Jacob concluded their impromptu meeting. "The best thing to do is to head for Ba'al's sarcophagus. Given Daniel's addiction, he will find his own way there, or Ba'al will use the addiction to his own advantage, using the sarcophagus as a means to control Daniel. Either way, our best chance is to get there before one of them does."

"We must endeavor at all costs to arrive before Daniel Jackson does, Jacob Carter." Teal'c said grimly. "If he attempts to use the sarcophagus again I fear we may be powerless to help him overcome its effects."

"I know, Teal'c." Jacob nodded. "Given Daniel's history with the machine, he won't be able to fight the effects of the machine on his mind for long. He will be more or less dependent on it just to function and he will be just where Ba'al wants him. Ba'al has a bargaining chip to use against us. Sam. And he has one to use against Daniel. The sarcophagus. Either way he wins."

"Not if I can help it." said O'Neill, grim determination written on his face. "I'm getting them back."

"Don't worry, Jack, we'll find them." Jacob promised bowing his head.

When he raised his head again it was Selmac who spoke. "Jacob and I have been here long enough to learn the lay out of the ship quite well. It is this way."

Together the three moved silently down the hallway; each one alone with their own disquieting thoughts about the fates of Sam and Daniel.

At the control center of the ship, Ba'al's first prime was attending to his duties. The day had gone well, with the smooth assimilation of the Serpent Sun God's men into his own command. Also the capture of the two Tauri pleased his master well. In the morning, they would again begin the interrogation of the man and woman. Soon, it would be time to accompany his master to the sarcophagus as was his evening custom. The sarcophagus here on the Serpent Sun God's ship would do nicely.

"Attend me, Berkta!" A sharp command from Ba'al prompted him from his musings.

Obediently, he followed Ba'al down the darkened corridor to the sarcophagus room. There he would wait for his master the full cycle of the machine which would not end for several hours. The day had been so full that Berkta himself had not had a chance to meditate. No matter. Once Ba'al was ensconced in the chamber he would quietly Kel-no-reem nearby. No one needed to know. Quickly, he moved to keep up with his master as they moved swiftly down the corridor toward the sarcophagus.

Additional Author's Note: If you've been following this story and reviewing, THANK YOU! I'm sorry to keep you guys hanging so long. But, Chapter 12 is well on its way to posting so you won't have to wait as long between chapters this time. Please send a review and let me know how I'm doing! I look forward to hearing from everybody!