The same disclaimer (I own nothing but the DVDs) and warnings (copious author's notes, watch out for the occasional F word, and angst ahoy!) still apply.

AN: Another secret of the writing process? I only write in Arial. I can't stand the Times New Roman font.

I could go on and on about why chapter 11 took so long (in the past six weeks there's been bronchitis for myself, an illness serious enough to require chest x-rays for my son, a broken tooth requiring oral surgery for my husband, family visiting from out-of-state, a reunion with a parent not seen for 27 years, a return of cancer in my husband's dog who then ran away while out of her mind on pain-pills, my nineteen-year-old cat passing away, my grandmother having a stroke, both of my bosses being out of town for three weeks and putting me 99.5% responsible for the running the store while they were away … why yes I'm surprised I've been getting out of bed in the morning, and no I'm not kidding about any of that) … but I won't. Go on and on, that is.

So without further ado … here it is. Chapter 11. Enjoy.

--

A thought drifted into Sam's consciousness. Surely she would simply cease to exist if this continued. How long could one person endure such pain before they just gave up? She could just … give up.

A single, commanding word abruptly encroached on Sam's awareness. "STOP!"

Sam found herself on hands and knees, gasping for breaths that could not come quickly enough. Her heart pounded to a staccato beat and she resisted the urge to retch and vomit.

Her head turned toward the sound of the voice and she saw a new figure in the doorway. Sam's mind rebelled at the vision before her.

It couldn't be.

The woman stepped forward, resplendent in her ornate gown. "Hello," she said with a deceptively mild smile. "We are Hathor."

--

From Jack's position on the floor, he watched Sam's body stiffen. His relief at the cessation of whatever device of torture Seth had been using on Sam was quickly tempered by the look of sheer despair in Sam's eyes.

Whoever this Goa'uld Hathor was, she meant business.

With the wave of a hand, more of the tall warrior-like servants filled the room, and Jack's hand -- the one he could feel -- itched for a weapon.

As Sam dragged herself to her feet, Jack was impressed with the strength she conveyed. He recognized the sheen of sweat across her brow, and the tremor of her hands. The gizmo the Goa'uld Seth had been using had obviously brought an immense amount of pain upon Samantha Carter.

And still she stood to face the newest threat.

Jack desperately wished he was able to take a full breath. Experimentally breathing in a little deeper, his body involuntarily curled in upon itself as the pain once again overwhelmed the pervasive numbness seeping across his body. An intense spasm stabbed across the injured side of his chest, and Jack pressed his head back into the floor to ground himself through the agonizing tremor.

Breathing shallowly, carefully, he relaxed as the numbness slowly returned. Jack's fingertips tingled and lights began to flash behind his eyes. He knew his deadened senses must be from a lack of oxygen, but at that moment, he found it hard to care.

Opening the eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed, Jack watched as the regal figure of Hathor moved toward Sam. Stepping carefully, she avoided the bodies of the members of her faction who had fallen beneath the hail of bullets put forth by the weapon Sam had wielded.

When she spoke, the creature's voice dripped with malice. "You have once been possessed by a Goa'uld, we sense."

Sam's response was immediate. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do. Tell us -- which of our kind has occupied your excellent form?" Hathor stepped around Sam as she spoke, weaving herself between Jack and Seth and the waiting guardsmen. "Was the Goa'uld's death swift? Is that why its remnants remain?"

Leaning in toward Sam's face, she must have observed in it something beyond the range of Jack's vision. Her gaze flickering across Sam's features, a look of pleasure crossed Hathor's face. She continued, "No, we think not. It was a lingering death, was it not? The shadow of its suffering is yet upon you. You have already learned … the pain a Goa'uld can inflict on its host is unimaginable."

The trembling in Sam's hands had returned. She obviously wasn't yet recovered from having her head fried, and Jack began to worry. Bracing himself against the pain, he drew enough breath to speak, concentrating fully on allowing his voice to sound as clear and strong as possible.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Though his voice did not carry as far as he wished, it did the job he'd intended. Hathor's attention drifted downward, and she stepped away from Sam.

"We are the mother of all pharaohs."

"No, you're whackjob. With a snake in your head," Jack ground out between shallow inhalations. "How do I … talk to the snake … anyway?" he finished, hand waving feebly at his side. He was out of breath.

From her position of leaning in to hear Jack's quiet words, Hathor drew up to her full height, incensed. Her eyes flashed in anger, and Jack felt an unknown terror coiling low in his belly.

Her voice was wickedly distorted in its fury. "We are Hathor. Nothing of our host remains." With a haughty set of her shoulders, she paced away, pressing Sam backward against two of the henchmen with her presence.

"You have been a host."

Sam's gaze was resolute. "No."

Hathor narrowed her eyes. "You lie."

The short breaths Jack had been taking caught in his throat, and he was taken with a sudden paroxysm. Coughing, the pain ripped through him, and he couldn't find breath enough to stop. His body spasming with each cough, Jack found himself on the losing end of conscious thought.

The lights behind his widening eyes returned, and the room faded from Jack's awareness as the pain overwhelmed his grasp on consciousness.

--

Her eyes narrowing, Hathor began to lose her composure. "We know you hosted one of the Goa'uld," she spat venomously. Eying Sam from head to toe, Hathor pursed her lips and regained a measure of calmness.

Sam stayed silent under the inspective eyes of the Goa'uld, knowing nothing she could say would convince the queen that Sam knew nothing of the movements of the Tok'ra or of the System Lords.

Hathor seemed to weigh her options, gazing about herself and walking slowly around Samantha once again. Sam kept her gaze on the Goa'uld, willing her body to be still despite the loathing coursing through her veins at the creature's proximity to the man on the floor.

Sam could hear Jack's labored breathing behind her; his breaths were coming shorter and faster now. Daring to glance at him, she noted the sightless stare, the tense line of his shoulders, the jut of his jaw, and knew before long he would be unable to draw breath at all. Sam's throat tightened at the helplessness of the situation, at Jack's suffering, and abstractly she wished Hathor would simply kill them both quickly and be done with it. She knew Jack had had enough of this drawn-out torture.

The Goa'uld queen appeared to be thinking deeply. As she walked, she flexed the hand on which her golden hand device rested; the matching golden fingernails on her other hand caressed the weapon longingly and lovingly.

Visibly coming to some kind of decision, she stopped pacing and faced Sam once more.

"If you genuinely have no knowledge of what we speak, then you shall not have the ability to use this." From within the folds of her gown, Hathor withdrew a Goa'uld healing device. Its rounded form filled her palm, handle side up, and Sam felt her breath catch.

"Such a shame," Hathor continued, her eyes sparkling with the malice her smooth voice failed to convey. "The gray-haired one is a fine specimen of your kind. And yet, he will die helplessly here at our feet while his extraordinary beloved stands stubbornly by." Turning away, she turned the healing device in the light, examining it with reverence before she continued. "If only she had the willingness to use such a simple tool of the Gods..."

Hathor sighed, the sound of it small and sad, in direct contrast with the smiling pleasure with which her next words dripped. "We will greatly enjoy witnessing his inevitable death."

Sam felt something inside her snap at the words, and she locked her gaze desperately on the Colonel's trembling form, willing the situation to be any but what it was. Jack lay prone on the floor in a sticky pool of his own blood. His lips were a terrifying shade of blue, his eyes rolling back behind half-drawn lids, mouth gaping with every beleaguered breath. Sam slowly knelt and reached out tentatively, brushing her fingertips along his nearest arm only to recoil quickly from the touch. The tourniquet left that arm pale and cold. It felt devoid of life and Sam knew the rest of his body would soon follow.

Closing her eyes, Sam was momentarily transported back to the Tok'ra planet, to the last time she'd watched a Jack O'Neill die. Drawing a deep breath in through her nose, she recognized the acrid tang of blood and iron in the air from that fateful day. Jack once again drew the same gasping breaths. Without further conscious thought, Sam was bringing herself to her feet and holding a hand out in Hathor's direction.

The Goa'uld hesitated, searching Sam's eyes -- for what, Sam was not sure. Knowledge? Information? She knew that by asking for the healing device she was synonymous with admitting to having been host to one of the creature's kind. The tingling of her scalp and spine told her, however, that the Goa'uld in the room could sense her very personal history with the Tok'ra as easily as she could detect the parasites' own intolerable presence.

Her gaze steely, Sam held the eyes of her enemy, mentally searching for the words needed. When they came, her voice was strong. "Gal a'quel."

Hathor's eyebrows raised and Sam knew she'd gotten her message across. Hathor acquiesced, placing the healing device in Sam's outstretched hand, just as Sam had requested in Goa'uld.

Though the queen's expression revealed nothing at the revelation, Sam knew she had given something of herself up in that moment. With Jack's life hanging in the balance, she found it hard to care.

Kneeling at the Colonel's side, Samantha swallowed the despair creeping in a the edges of her consciousness and focused her thoughts on activating the healing device. She'd had little experience in using one, and it took everything she had to bring about the concentration necessary for its use.

Raising the piece of technology over Jack's body and cradling it beneath her two hands, she focused her mental energy into the device and felt rather than saw it begin to glow. The background tingle of naquadah in her body grew into an insistent and fiery burn and Sam clenched her jaw against the sensation. With every breath, she directed the gathering energy into the device and went to work.

Glimpses of the knowledge she had lost with the long-ago death of her symbiote Jolinar began to creep into her awareness. A word here, a feeling there -- Sam relaxed her mind and allowed the latent instincts and half-remembered thoughts to drive her use of the device.

With her eyes closed, an overview of Jack's physiology came into her consciousness and Sam's worst fears were confirmed: the pneumothorax was critical.

Sam mouth opened in a silent gasp as a sense of the sheer pressure of the air accumulating in Jack's chest assailed her. Not only was one of his lungs pressed tightly toward the cavity's midline, its spongy mass struggling and failing to inflate, but the pressure was squeezing his heart and its vessels to the side, the strain preventing the flow of blood from Jack's heart. She could see its image in her mind, the big muscle pumping frantically against the crushing force -- both atria contracting rhythmically, pulling in the oxygen depleted blood before pressing it forward, only to have the life-giving fluid accumulate within the ventricles with almost nowhere to go.

Letting her mind drift, Sam followed Jack's blocked pulmonary artery to the lung and his injuries, centering the healing device's energy there.

Time ceased to exist for Sam as she worked. She lost track of for how long she knelt on the floor, eyes closed against the harsh overhead light, hands cradling the crystalline high-tech device. Her mind racing to her full ability, Sam began the slow process of healing Jack O'Neill.

The healing device allowed Sam to see the constituents of Jack's body as if under a microscope, and, using her thoughts, she focused her mental energy into the cellular level. Even as she brought broken cells back together, Sam allowed pathways to form between adjacent cell membranes within the injured lung. The pressurized air in Jack's chest was released in several slow, hissing breaths from between his dusky blue lips.

As the pressure released, the mosaic of specialized cells that allow for the exchange of gasses in Jack's blood came into view, and -- eyes darting furiously under fluttering eyelids -- Sam shifted her thoughts even deeper, to the molecular level. She scanned the now free-flowing blood in Jack's circulatory system. Prompting the alveoli in his lungs to swiftly swap oxygen for the acrimonious carbon dioxide, she slowly opened her eyes, watching as Jack's color began to improve steadily with each breath.

Studiously ignoring the presence of the Goa'uld and Jaffa behind her, Sam brought the illuminated healing device to settle over Jack's injured arm. Returning her eyelids to their lowered positions, she used the energy the device was drawing from her body to knit together the shattered flesh. After some time, she removed one hand from the healing device, untwisting the knot holding tension on the tourniquet.

Sam felt relief flood through her. Healthy pink color spread down Jack's arm, and Sam dropped the healing device with a clatter as the returning blood banished the gray and lifeless look of the limb.

Taking his hand in hers, she pressed the fingertips to her lips as their color returned, and Sam was gladdened by the warmth in them. Losing herself momentarily in the relief, she kissed his hand again and again. Jack was alive and would stay alive. Her throat tightening at the thought that they'd once again escaped certain death -- for the moment -- the realization that they were now at the mercy of two rogue Goa'uld came upon her.

At the very moment her body stiffened with the comprehension, rough hands grabbed at her from behind, and Sam found herself immobilized, elbows held tight at her back, and her knees pressed tightly to the floor. Pressing her head upward in the futile struggle, she found the Goa'uld queen leaning in to meet Sam's eyes smugly.

"We shall greatly enjoy witnessing your subjugation, my dear. The pain, as you well remember, will be unimaginable." With one flippant gesture, Hathor's Jaffa were pulling Sam bodily from the room.

From her position between the two Jaffa, Sam watched as Hathor gazed calmly down at Jack's form on the floor. Her last view of him was of his utter stillness as the Goa'uld queen knelt down at his side, a quiet smile on her malevolent face.

Glancing up momentarily, Hathor barked at Seth. "Shal'kek!" And so Seth followed Samantha from the room, following malevolently behind as the Jaffa dragged Sam down the hall.

--

Laying on his back on the highly-polished and cold wooden floor, Jack fought to keep his breath slow, deep and even. The first thing Jack noticed as he returned to consciousness was the strident absence of pain. The second was the fact that he could breathe again.

Pulling in another deep breath, he relished the feel of the air moving across his lips like he never had before. Never in his life had the simple act of drawing oxygen into his lungs been so sweet. He tasted the clear air on his tongue and swallowed the emotion that threatened to overwhelm.

The next deep, pleasurable breath brought with it a scent of exotic spice, and he opened his eyes to meet an icy grey gaze.

Startled, Jack didn't hesitate. While his right arm feinted toward Hathor's face, his left hand tightened around the device of Sam's in the pocket of the tac vest at Jack's side.

Equally surprised by Jack's move to attack, Hathor pulled back, blocking the first blow with her arm. Anticipating her backward motion, he palmed the flat gizmo and thrust it behind Hathor's head.

Her retreat stopped suddenly as the back of her head stuck metal; with the flick of a thumb, Jack activated the device.

The queen's body went rigid, and as her eyes rolled back in her head, Jack flipped his body from beneath hers. Moving into a crouch, hands on the floor in front of him for balance, he watched as the electricity arced between the device tangled in Hathor's hair and the back of her head. Her eyes widened further as she collapsed to the floor, body spasming with the electric force.

The battery's cells quickly depleted, leaving the Goa'uld queen facedown on the floor, small tendrils of smoke drifting away from where the device lay -- the smell of burned hair and scorched flesh filled the air.

Still Jack crouched, motionless.

That the device worked as Sam devised didn't surprise him; however, the violence of it was startling. It was nothing like the tasers he'd handled in the past. This electrical weapon was unforgiving in its brutality.

Raising from his position near the floor, Jack took a cautious step toward the body. A sudden twitch of the woman's arm had him sidestepping the body to seize the AR-15 where it lay forgotten in its corner of the room.

The arm twitched again, the palm pressing flat against the floor, fingertips struggling for purchase against the slick surface. Jack brought himself back to the body at a half-run, and steeling himself, he took sight with the weapon before tucking the toe of one boot beneath the Goa'uld's shoulder. With a swift kick, he flipped the body over onto its back and once again met startling grey eyes.

The terror he saw in those eyes was entirely unexpected.

Malice had fallen away to an expression of fear and desperation. The eyes darted frantically, and as Jack leaned in cautiously for a closer look, a gasp escaped the woman's lips. "Aht." A hand came up in front of her face in defense, hiding the eyes.

Her body began to shake and Jack used the barrel of the weapon to push her arm aside. There were tears on her cheeks, and as her mouth silently gaped, Jack could see the slackness at one side of the face that showed that she was bleeding within the brain.

"Aht," she gasped again, pain visible on her delicate features. "Tahk'seem."

Pressing the barrel of the weapon into the woman's chest, Jack untrustingly knelt on one knee before her. "I don't understand you," he said in the slow clear voice he reserved for the foreign and the mentally deranged.

Her face crumpling, the tears flowing freely now, she sobbed. "Eter'u shu nu'khemet, ghetu mo hehr'r rhed wehy." * Drawing a ragged breath, she clutched at the barrel of the gun with one hand; the other hand lay limp at her side. Another seizure racked her body, leaving her lax and breathless.

Pulling the barrel of the weapon to her forehead, swallowing her tears, she met Jack's eyes meaningfully from the floor where she lay. "Mahs'iway."

"Mossy-way?" Jack questioned, rolling the unfamiliar word on his tongue.

The young woman attempted a short nod, only to stiffen in pain as the mortal injury to the back of her head contacted the floor. "Mahs'iway," she gasped again. "Ah!" Pressing her forehead into the barrel of the weapon, she rode out the violent quaking of her body.

Having witnessed human beings in the throes of death in the past, Jack understood exactly what she was asking of him.

Closing his eyes momentarily before coming to a decision, Jack stood, pulling the weapon from the woman's clutching fingers.

She began to babble again, her words slurring the ancient language even further. Her only working hand swept the air in front of her, desperately searching for Jack. Her eyes, now sightless, swept helplessly across him, unseeing, and Jack stepped back further in order to sight the weapon so he could fire.

Pausing as another shuddering tremor coursed through her body, Jack waited until she stilled, then aimed the weapon exactly. Taking a breath and holding it momentarily, Jack closed his eyes as his finger squeezed the trigger.

The retort was loud in the small space, and he was turning away by the time the recoil of the weapon even registered against his shoulder. His mind knew what he would see if he were to look at the body, but he couldn't bring himself to witness the gore that would be left behind by the high-velocity shot to the head.

As often as he'd taken human lives, he avoided seeing the aftermath if he didn't have to. The crumpled form visible in his peripheral vision told him everything he needed to know.

Pressing himself to the wall behind the door, his muscles trembling from the exertion, Jack waited for the guards to rush into the room. Predictably, they didn't clear the space behind them and two more headshots had him eliminating the only possible witnesses to his presence.

Clearing the hallway and finding it empty, Jack ghosted out into the building.

He had to find Sam.

--

TBC

--

* Hathor's host lived through such extreme pain and devastation for the better part of three thousand years that she was (as Jack correctly interpreted) begging him to end her life. "Eter'u shu nu'khemet, ghetu mo hehr'r rhed wehy," roughly (VERY roughly) translates to, "The river of Egypt is dry, the water is crossed on foot." It is a line from The Prophecy of Neferty, an Ancient Egyptian tale which portends a time of ultimate chaos and destruction. Let me know if you want a link to the audio recording I used for this phonetic transcription of the sentence. The true beauty of this language is impossible to convey in print.

--

AN: Thank you so much for continuing to read and to review. The private messages are especially touching, as I imagine I would be the only one thinking about this story on a daily basis. I appreciate the continued support, and will do my best to keep updating regularly.

I apologize if you happen to speak any form of Egyptian, as I'm sure I butchered it.

Also, I apologize for any typos or grammatical inconsistencies in this chapter. I should really wait one more day and more thouroghly edit this, but I went ahead and posted it anyway. You guys have been more than patient. Do let me know if anything glaring stands out at you, and I'll correct it (although, I'm sure I'll be reading through it again before long).