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Disclaimer: All characters, names, settings etc belong to their respective copyright holders, only Night Wolf and a few other things are of my own creation (but inspired from many things under copyright, which aren't mine).

Chapter 14

Doctor Aderyn Pearce applied a local anaesthetic to the man's leg and carefully cut the shard of metal out of his leg, his vitals were still crashing due to the energy blast he'd taken in the torso, but the metal and its associated charms were just complicating matters.

"Get him on a compensator and IV, run the scanner over the major organs, it'll determine the elements of the energy. Run the results through the database, start with known Dalek ones, we might be lucky and they'll be consis…" She trailed off as the light alert system, an unobtrusive lighting system used throughout the medical labs and bays to denote certain alert statuses during battle, usually it was blue denoting a battle alert. It switched to an orange colour just as the whole ship's shaking and vibration that Aderyn Pearce had grown to ignore during battle picked up several notches as the enemy decided to pick up their attack on the ship, they also lost gravity.

Aderyn clicked her heels together, though unlike Dorothy, these only activated charms in built into her shoes and made her grip to the floor.

"Lock all systems down, belt the patients in." She said in a firm loud tone around her medical lab as everything went close to zero gravity.

The medical bays and labs were about three quarters of the way down the ship, close to the engine and power systems.

All UNIT vessels generated a gravity field that streatched outwards from the engines and encompassed most of the ship, areas which required gravity all of the time were closer to the stern of the ship so that in battle situation the gravity (and the power required for it) could be streatched back away from less needy systems.

The fact that they were loosing gravity meant that power was being redirected to other systems that were in dire need of it.

Then they arrived on gurneys, that stuck to the floor in the close to zero gravity.

The people they'd come to rescue.

"Shit. Initial readings?" She asked of the Doctor and nurse moving around them.

"Extreme doses of radiation we're still matching the exact frequencies, she's the worst, physical and mental torture, everyone else has one of the other." The doctor motioned around at their patients.

"Get them onto beds and, " She paused as the steady rumble changed direction and the ship's tone altered.

"Oh crap, activate restraints on all beds." That was when a rushed announcement went out throughout the ship.

"Brace for impact!"

Then a binary star which had been altered at its primal level to function as an inter-temporal gateway imploded in close proximity to four of the United Nations' Intelligence Taskforce space craft.

Doctor Aderyn Pearce grabbed a hold of the bed and activated all the restrains and braced herself against the wall.

She took the half second between the announcement and the explosive wave that hit the ship to be just slightly satisfied that she'd guessed it.

Though she'd been serving aboard the ship for about 5 years now, you got to recognise certain things, those things probably saved a few people who wouldn't have been tied down when the RSCS Formidable did a veritable dive nose forwards.

Then moments, maybe seconds afterward Pearce shook herself out of what might have been a momentary blackout as lights flickered though they stayed functioning.

She also became very aware of the of a flat tone and pushed herself probably too quickly up from her brace position and rushed over to the bed.

"She's flat lining. Get me the paddles." Pearce grabbed them out of the younger doctor's hands.

"What're you doing her heart's stopped."

"She's just been through Dalek induced mental torture we put more electricity through her body she's a vegetable. Number 8 stimulating salve directly over the heart cavity and 5cc of adrenalin. Stat." Pearce said as she moved to judge the intracranial swelling on the patient's head.

"That'll only work if it doesn't kill her with shock." Commented Doctor Graham Wycoff as he placed a paste on her patient's arm.

"Have you worked out what's killing them precisely?"

"Aside from Dalek torture?" He asked wirly and removed the now rubbery paste. "Here we go." He muttered as the needle was plunged into Samantha Carter's heart.

"Got a pulse. BP's low." Pearce swung the screen of diagnostics around. The patient's BP was too low, there she was bleeding worse than bad internally and now that her heart was pumping she would bleed out long before they fixed the radiation that was eating her insides, her brain while saved from being fried wasn't in good shape with the pressure building up and…she had more patients who could be saved here and now.

"Bring in the cryo-stasis units. Freeze them all, intubate her before you put her in otherwise her lungs will collapse when we reheat them."

UNIT had access to two forms of stasis devices, long and short term, long term devices were hardly ever used, the minimum a subject was in a long term unit was a week.

Short term was just that, a maximum of 72 hours, the name 'cryo-stasis' was also slightly misleading, the cryogenics portions was actually specifically targeted slowing freezing and slowing charms paired with advanced reverse engineered alien stasis technology making them one of the most expensive items in the medical inventory. All the activating crystals, woods and other ancillary charm activators were carved and charmed from scratch, some of the components could be reused, but for it was a costly, though often vital piece of equipment.

In cryo-stasis, all bodily functions were suspended, the mind also, though in some instances the mind slept as the body slowed to a stop…

"Hey Sam."

Samantha Carter blinked, one moment she was…the memory slipped away from her and now she was in, she looked around a white void.

"Sir?" She asked the man in front of her.

"Hell Carter, you call me sir here?"

"Oh…is this, am I…?" The man in front of her raised an eyebrow. "I'm dead aren't I?"

"Nah." She stared at the man.

"What do you last remember Colonel Carter?" Sam turned around, as she turned something glided past her, just out of sight as she faced the other taller man.

Sam shook her head and closed her eyes as she remembered the ebb and flow of pain before.

"Being knocked out."

"Been there a few times." Said the first man.

"So have I. We all have." This new man, in glasses appeared before her.

Sam turned around, looking all around her, she was sure she could feel something.

"Here, take a card." This next man was in front of her, with long black wings hanging off his back, he was also shuffling a deck of cards in front of her and his eyes had a weird intensity.

Sam just nodded and took the card, it had a picture of a hat on it.

The green eyed man smiled at her.

"Shouldn't I be working out something, isn't that how this is meant to work?" Sam asked the assembled people around her.

"You have had an experience like this before." The large man with a symbol on his forehead commented.

"Yes, I did. But that was different. I know that I'm in a hospital…" Sam trailed off as a flash of memory bleached out the white void and she experience or recalled struggling for breath as she was wheeled down a corridor of a ship, everything shaking around her.

Then she was back in the white void.

"Crap!" She exclaimed to herself, nearly suffocating on her own lungs would be preferable to this.

"You alright Sam?"

"Yes, sir, fine." She said almost on automatic.

"Here let me take that." Sam found she was standing in front of a long table, behind it was the winged man with bright green eyes. He took the card out of her hand and placed it on the table and then grinned at her. "Hocus pocus." He said waving his wands over the table, there was a flash and a rabbit leapt out of the picture of a hat on the table.

"Cool!" Exclaimed the slightly greying man and picked up one of the rabbits as more started to jump out of the hat…the picture of a hat, on a steel table.

"Still having doubts?"

"No." Sam said as something passed across her peripheral vision.

"We should go home shouldn't we Sam?" The man in the glasses asked her.

"Yeah, we should." The greying man agreed.

"Indeed." Something passed closer, and there was that smell and it wasn't the rabbits which continued to jump out of the picture of the hat.

"Time to leave I think." The green eyed man said with a quick flourish grabbed the edges of the picture of the hat stretching it out to the size of the table and grabbed her hand, pulling her down the rabbit hole.

The landing knocked the wind out of her and she rolled into a standing position and looked around, the winged green eyed man was looking around their current location.

It smelt to Sam a bit like the woods outside Cheyenne Mountain, or it could have been many of the planets through the gate, of course this was all probably in her head.

"Why'd you do that?"

The green eye'd man kicked the dirt and rocky ground.

"Rougher on their motive units."

"On what…?" She heard the noise again, it wasn't much, maybe she misheard the whine of a car, or a gun.

"Let's keep moving." Said the man gesturing incline.

"You're not here." Sam said after they'd been walking for a few minutes, maybe it was a few seconds.

"I'm not?" He quirked an eyebrow.

"This is a result of concussion."

"It couldn't be some form of shared mental landscape?"

Sam thought about this, and it was possible, she'd certainly been through it before.

"Where you're all part of one massive computer system that's powering a city full of machines who fought the last battle over humanity and won."

"That's The Matrix." Sam said to the green eyed man.
"Fair cop, I'll go quietly. What about a psychic experience."

"That's not possible."

"Is it, are you sure?"

Sam blinked as she recalled reading into UNIT's activities on Earth, their telepath and telekinetics and whatever else, it had been interesting, especially as none of them suffered any of the side affects that Jonas and Cassie did.

"Well?" The man asked as reality, or whatever this was snapped back into place.

"You're not telepathic."

"Do you know that or are you just assuming it because you don't know whether or not."

As Sam started to formulate an answer an energy bolt flew past them impacting on a tree beside them.

"Get down!" Screamed the ground, and two men covered in camouflage netting rose out of the ground firing into the forest. It was the lightly greying man and the tall man with the symbol on his forehead, they were both firing SAWs at something she couldn't see.

"Time to get moving I think." The man with deep green eyes said as he eyed the forest.

"But sir…"

"Go Carter! That's an order."

--/

Doctor Aderyn Pearce stripped off her umpteenth pair of gloves and walked over to the labs where doctor Graham Wycoff was sat hunched over the scanner and enhanced microscope humming to himself.

"What's the butcher's bill?" He asked not looking up.

"Two dead, three that might not make it. Plenty who'll need regrowth."

"What were our casualty projections for this?"

"None?" She asked in an optimistic sarcastic tone. That was one of the things she hated having to do, using data to guess how many people they might loose. She sighed pulling up a chair, she'd been standing for far too long and her body despite the various stimulants was starting to feel the strain. "Three per ship. We've just had the remaining Thylacine pilots in for radiation treatment. Speaking of…"

"Yes. Our Dalek survivors. This is the culprit." He pushed himself away from the microscope blinking as he acclimatised to the low light in the lab.

The ship had main power back up, about 2 hours ago, main engines had come back 7 hours after that, thought they still couldn't make the jump to hyperspace or even create a hyperspace window, interference.

She looked at the screen, it looked like a virus.

"It's a virus?"

"Sort of. There's been some interesting findings coming from the Granger expedition. A Dalek saucer probably from the future or a future alternate."'

"That's the interesting thing?"

"Not really. They're finding indications that the Daleks mutated humans or humanoids to become Daleks."

Pearce didn't say anything, what the Daleks could do didn't surprise her, she'd seen more than her share of people who had felt the Dalek's hand, so to speak.

"According to the information they use a combination of drugs and radiation to fast mutate and then into a waiting shell."

"Mustn't have done their genetic pride much good."

"Dr Granger theorises that it was an emergency procedure, there weren't enough of them to fly their ship. But you've got me sidetracked. This 'virus' isn't just that, it's a radiological mutagenic virus."

"Designed to mutate them into Daleks?" Pearce asked as she turned to the computer ready to punch up a biohazard alert.

"Yes…and no. It looks like a much slower process, all of them have been through torture both physical and mental via a mind probe machine. But it hasn't worked, or they didn't get the answers they wanted."

"So?"

"The Dalek in charge is obviously a creative bastard. This will slowly take control and convert them slowly, even slower now they're away from the Dalek's ship and radiation probably filtered by their ship to produce the results."

"High doses of anti-radiation medication and treatment."

"There's something else."

"Why didn't I think there wasn't?" Pearce dragged a hand through her hair. Wycoff smiled.

"Because they're salt and pepper shaped bastards. It's got a mental component, I'm already calculating and comparing our set of rad meds to combat the radiation, the virus element is something native to the Daleks it's also running through our known database of their nasties. The mental part is more complicated. Did you check their EEG readings?"

Technically speaking all their readings came from advanced scanners, including those for gathering information about the brain, and while the information gathered was more detailed than any EEG the name like many things stuck.

"Preliminary check, there was some brain activity, it's common especially after prolonged exposure to a mind analysis system."

"Look at them now." He hit some keys and the large screen above them changed showing various fields of information. It indicated an active, almost stimulated mental landscape.

"Please say this is just normal dreaming."

"As if our jobs were ever that easy."

"Why can't people just have normal regular dreams, instead we're pursued by nightmares, surreal and annoying as they are." Pearce sighed as she rambled to herself.

Wycoff smiled, Pearce hated it when he smiled in that knowing yet 'guess what' sort of manner.

"What?"

"The radiation treatment will have to wait until we get an exact fix on it. The mental component we need to address now." He paused Pearce thought it was probably for dramatic effect. She would have glared at him, but was enjoying the feeling of having her eyes closed and the dull hum of the ship that was currently more soothing than what she could tell was about to come. "I've got a mental construct that can be used to combat the mental element that will destroy most of it and push its remnants into a physical reality, but"

"Here it comes..." Pearce muttered to herself.

"Each of us will have to enter their mental landscape and deliver and make them understand the construct that will combat the virus."

Pearce wanted to whack her head against the desk, but what was coming would give her enough of a headache.

--/

"Can't you just wave your wand and get me in there?" She asked as she helped connect the various cables and lower down the various mental scanner and probes that would let her into Lt Col Samantha Carter's active consciousness.

"This?" He flicked the long wooden wand around his fingers with practised ease. "You know why, it's all very personal, I can do it for myself, but as an intermediary we get into complications. I'll be using the same system you're using, just in case. At least with this set up with we've got some bio-feedback buffers. Time to get you fully hooked up, ready?" He smiled at her, Pearce glared at him.

"What do you think, the last time we did this I had a migraine for a 3 days."

"Don't you already have a headache Aderyn?"

"Yes Graham, thanks for reminding me." She said pushing herself into the chair next to the stasis bed and began to stick the pads along her scalp as Graham Wycoff made final adjustments to other instruments pointing at her and Lt Col Carter.

She was just the first, Graham and others would be working on the other rescued crew, they'd all be entering their dreamscapes at roughly the same time, just in case there was some low level psi-communion that the viruses had, it was unlikely with the Daleks, but it was a possibility that they'd faced before.

--/

Just as she'd shut her eyes and reality had winked out, Dr Aderyn Pearce was standing in a forest.

"This is not going to end well." She said looking around herself and breathing a large breathful of imagined air.

It was always interesting to see the detail that a human consciousness went to when creating a mental landscape. She could taste the cold air, the smell of pine, the earthy scent of dirt below her books.

Then, inevitably she was shot at.

The thing was when working within someone else's psychic landscape there was a direct link between your representation within their psychic and mental landscape and your physical reality.

Aderyn Pearce threw herself across the slope and behind a tree as several energy blasts impacted around her. Gritting her teeth and rubbing the shoulder she landed against she peered around the tree and swore.

She could just about see the flashing lights of the Daleks as they moved up the mountain the four flashes of their favourite battle cry.

She turned back to face the mountain, which seemed to have risen several degrees in inclination since the last time she looked at it.

"Buggering hell." She said as she looked around for a method of climbing the molehill that had become a mountain in between looking at some Daleks. Something snorted next to her. It was a horse.

Pearce looked around, mental landscapes were malleable, but she had been hoping for an ATV, or something, or maybe an all purpose Dalek gun…She looked around her again, it failed to materialise, the horse however stayed where it was looking at her curiously.

"Fine, fine. At least you've got a saddle." She muttered and climbed up onto the horse and guided it up the mountain, as they climbed she could hear the cry of the Daleks get that little be louder and more determined.

--/

"Okay so why have you been having such a time about this whole universe?"

Sam blinked, one moment she was rushing through up a mountain the next she was riding a horse through a valley, the mountains in the distance were topped with snow, there were trees dotted every so often around lower hills.

"What just happened?"

"Jump cut, don't worry about it." The green eyed man grinned and winked to her.

Sam tried not to, it was easy to forget as she looked around at the landscape around her, it didn't look like anything planet she'd been to, recently at least, in fact it looked a bit like New Zealand, where she hadn't been recently, maybe it was a film she, Daniel and Teal'c had seen recently.

"I'm sorry what?" She said as the horse made a noise at the other horse drawing her back to un-reality. "Why can't I, why are you asking me this?"

The green eyed man shrugged.

"Are we safe here?" Sam said as she closed her eyes for a moment enjoying the quiet despite the wind gently buffeting her.

"For the moment."

Sam could tell even though she wasn't looking at him that he was looking at her.

"I don't know why."

"Really." Now she could tell he was giving her one of her looks at her.

"Anyway why should I talk to you, you're just part of my…"

"Subconscious?" The man asked again.

"Psychosis." She countered.

"What you do could be considered magical, wormholes across the galaxy, miracle drugs, snakes in the head."

"Science, not magic." Sam didn't know why she was arguing with, what was probably herself, or her own subconsciousness or psychosis or what.

"You have the power to throw energy, that's the same that these people do, yet you find it so hard to believe."

"You've travelled in time, met seen the future and the past. Been to literally hell. Your consciousness has had a game of pass the parcel and you know the telepathy exists. So why are you so reticent to accept this world?"

"Because. It's too easy." Sam said, quietly then her voice started to rise. "It's too easy for them, there are consequences, there has to be…"

--/

Dr Aderyn Pearce suddenly found herself on a plateau, with three men holding white rabbits watching her.

"Who are you?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Ooo…someone new."

Pearce looked between the three of them.

"Hello psychology in action." She said to herself, the men before her looked puzzled.

At least she wasn't encountering any complexes, or major psychological traits, problematic annoying ones that is.

"I'm looking for" She was cut off by the tall man with the symbol in his forehead.

"We know who you are looking for, how do we know you are not with them."

That's when said 'them' came up over the rise, to the horse's credit it didn't seem fazed.

Though upon reflection considering it wasn't a horse there wasn't much for it not to be fazed about.

Pearce swore to herself and grabbed at her side for where she wanted a weapon to be. To her surprise there actually was a weapon, or it could have been a piece of decorative art that her, or this environment had added because it thought she needed a bit of bended phallic art work.

She squeezed the handle and tried not to think about the connotations as it leapt up and blue energy was flung from it three times into one of the Daleks making it disappear.

"The might of the phallus." Pearce looked back to the three men, who were holding similar weapons. "I don't believe this." She looked around hoping for a reset button, or at least something to turn off the surreality, which wasn't even a word but it was what it felt like.

"Go, we'll cover you." Said the older man.

"Where?"

"The door, out to work." The man with glasses said pointing behind them.

Pearce stared, she was sure she hadn't seen a large blast door with 'Level 28' written on it that was crafted into the hillside before.

"Okay." She guided the horse, or maybe the horse guided itself towards the door, it slid open with a clunk and as she got into the darkness it shut leaving her in total darkness for a moment, then she was standing on a ramp and there was a ring full of water standing in front of her.

"Here I was thinking we wouldn't be going through the whole gamut of things." She said to the horse and wondered if Wycoff was getting as many ideas thrown at him, no knowing his luck it would be easy, a desert island with Daleks coming out of the water, or London and Daleks rolling across bridges chasing people in a deserted city, simple things slightly improbably things.

Instead she got guns that looked like phalluses…or maybe snakes and a giant hole…or a ring of water. She was glad she hadn't majored in psychology.

Then she was being walked into the puddle of standing water…

Then she was in the middle of a valley which looked a bit like New Zealand, in the distance she could make out two figures on horses.

"Let's get after them." She muttered to the horse and jerked backwards and grappled with the reins as the horse took off at an impossibly fast gallop.

--/

"Sacrifices?" The green eyed man asked as Carter's voice started to rise.

"Yes!" She exclaimed. "Their magic that sorcery is too simple, the method is, it doesn't make sense." As Sam was trying to compose her next sentence a woman on a horse came into view.

"Hi…" She smiled between them.

"Who are you?" The green eyed man and Carter asked at the same time.

"Captain P…" She was cut off.

"Shhh…." He said holding a finger to his lips.

"Okay." Aderyn Pearce said mainly to herself.

"You didn't answer, who are you?" Lt Col Samantha Carter repeated her question, Pearce eyed what looked like Captain Harry Potter from the RSCS Hattah.

"Forget about him, it. Who are you, how did you get here?"

"I'm a doctor, from the ship that rescued you…" Aderyn said and started to explain.

Sam nodded after a while, she didn't know how long the doctor had been explaining what had happened, but it made sense, in a way.

"So he really is part of my psychosis?"

"Probably part of your mind that embodies everything that you don't understand into a being. Or maybe the person he looks like's personality made a big impression on you." Names seemed to be an odd faux pas here, Aderyn had quickly realised, maybe it was a coping mechanism, or something to do with mental defence, there was a lot of power in a name.

Pearce rubbed the neck of the horse, trying to keep herself grounded in the here and now. It was too easy to be distracted by random thoughts here.

"Why am I riding a horse, with him?" Lt Col Carter was saying to herself.

"Possibly some unconscious need for this setting, Pearce risked a look backwards and saw them, they were some distance away, she started to wonder if they were always there or if they were just there because she'd looked backward for them.

"Paging Schrödinger."

"I'm sorry?"

"Nothing, just…you understand what you need to do?"

"Yes, I think so doctor…" Then the Lt Col seemed to have a look of intense concentration, and then their surroundings melted around them including Capt Potter who seemed to just wobble like a horizon.

Then they were standing on a road in the middle of no where.

She was still sitting on the horse, which looked very out of place, Lt Col Carter seemed much more in keeping with this world, sitting on a big motorbike.

"Very Mad Max of you Lt Col." Aderyn risked her rank, especially since Capt Potter, or a psychological facsimile wasn't around to give her odd looks.

"…ter-min…ate…" She could hear their battle cry now, even though they were barely visible, their voices carried on the wind.

"Your people are working on the outside?"

"Something like that, but we have to heal the mind and the body."

"Right…" She looked up ad Pearce and smiled, that was when she noticed the large glass bottle on the bike, with a white rag in it. "Time to stop running." Carter said with conviction and kicked the bike into life.

"Do I follow her or stand and watch?" Pearce asked the horse, who seemed to decide for itself and took off at a fast gallop after Carter.

Then as she thought she was approaching Carter Pearce witnessed what could be described as psychological mushroom cloud and everything went white.

--/

Aderyn massaged her temples and then took another sip of the unpleasant concoction. Wishing for it to wash away the blinding migraine that was washing back and forth in her mind, the rest of her body was still tingling, which might just have been to do with the way she had slumped in the chair for the short time she'd been within Lt Col Carter's consciousness.

Wycoff walked into her office cradling his own mug of something unpleasant.

"How's it going Graham?"

"Proceeding as expected, the radiation should clear out completely."

"Leaving us to fix up the physical damage."

"What's the word from the bridge?" He said gesturing the computer screens behind her.

"Another 20 hours until we clear the interference field, then we should be able to jump back to Research Base One. So how was your trip down the rabbit hole?"

"Just as bad as yours Aderyn." He said it in a questioning statement. She shrugged.

"I've been through worse."

"Haven't we all."

--/

This chapter took longer than usual, though I have more of a reason why this and previous chapters have taken a while longer.

Non-linear story telling. Straight forward narratives are easy to write, ones that throw around concepts are harder, that's why the time travelling thing in Venice threw me off a bit. This chapter again, a bit conceptual, takes longer.

But I like to write these things and if it were a straightforward narrative every week it'd be a bit boring and un-interesting.

Just a note about the genesis of this chapter;

It was going to be much shorter (and therefore have room for other characters), Carter was going to be rescued, put in stasis and then, well she wouldn't have had much else.

Then there was going to be this whole side line about some Daleks having escaped the explosion of their ship by transmatting onto the RSCS Formidable, and it would have been one of those claustrophobic creeping around their ship getting zapped and fighting off this last group of Daleks.

The main problem I found with that idea was I'd knocked out the familial character of Sam Carter and even if she was awake was too injured to do anything and it wasn't her ship to do anything on. I did think about going ahead with it regardless but without Carter I'd have to introduce a whole bunch of new characters, and that would have been a bit much.

So, that's why I cam to the two doctors and the dream state Carter's mind thing, I can have some fun with some (what would be flashbacks) and there's the whole SG1 team in this chapter, even if they're not here.

I know I promised Teal'c this week. But…well next week, definitely now that I've tied up two out of four of the SG1 cast, there is only Teal'c and Daniel to cover.