Alisen Brightman suppressed a yawn and knocked on the door for the third time. Not getting a response, she frowned and checked her watch. It was already past six a.m. and she had expected Doctor Fraiser to be in the commissary or infirmary by now. Their shift started in less than an hour and she'd already been paged to help at the infirmary as more people seemed to be affected by this virus. She'd just finished helping Sergeant O'Brien, who'd been attacked by Master Sergeant Vern Alberts. The skinny, bald-headed man with glasses had been an easy target for him as MSgt Alberts' more primitive urges had come to the surface and he had tried to establish his position with the personnel in the control room. He'd even tried to attack one of the female members of the staff, but Sergeant O'Brien apparently had a chivalrous streak in him and tried to protect the woman… only to end up with a broken nose, a cracked rib and some nasty cuts on his face.

After she'd stitched him up, she'd gone over to the CMO's base quarters to see if Janet was ready. She herself was still tired despite a few hours of sleep, but all the infected patients were getting their breakfast right about now so they could be sedated afterwards. It was something Doctor MacKenzie had noticed; after some of their primitive urges had been satisfied – feeding, mating or fighting – they tended to rest a bit and it was much easier to subdue them and administer the sedatives during those moments. It only took a few orderlies, SFs, male nurses and a doctor. Now that she'd had an update from MacKenzie about the new cases that had emerged during his shift last night, she was hoping Janet would be able to help her out before the briefing and videoconference with General Hammond from HWS.

It was still early though and she could understand why the CMO wasn't up yet, considering all the work she had done these past few days and the little hours of sleep she'd gotten. After pulling a double shift herself yesterday, Alisen had been happy that she didn't have to work her regular nightshift and had been sent to the guest quarters to get some sleep. Janet Fraiser had assigned Doctor MacKenzie to do the night shift instead, because he'd only been doing a few hours of paperwork in his office considering his specialty wasn't needed. Janet had been pulling off eighteen hour workdays for over a week and needed her sleep, Doctor Warner had been patching up some of the assaulted and infected patients in the OR and she herself had been doing a double shift, all the other MDs weren't on base. She'd been happy to hear Doctor Carmichael was recovering from his bout of the flu, but since he hadn't been on base when the lockdown had been initiated it wasn't of much use to them now. There were only four of them now and they were stretched thin, especially because Doctor Warner was the only surgeon and thus had to be sharp whenever someone was severely injured.

Sighing, Alisen debated what to do now. Raising her hand once more, she knocked again – loudly. "Janet?" She inquired, hoping her voice would carry through the door. "Janet? Doctor Fraiser?" She took on a sterner tone, hoping maybe it would trigger a subconscious reaction. Jamming her hands in the pockets of her doctor's coat, she bit her lip. "Doctor Fraiser?" She tried again, her fingers curling around her hair pin in the pocket. Moving her arms to loosen the knots in her shoulders, Alisen pulled her hair back and eventually placed the clip in, making sure her hair would stay out of her face, and used her elbow to knock on the door again. "Okay, I'm coming in," she mumbled more to herself, because she doubted Janet had been able to hear her. Pulling out her access card, she swiped it through the reader next to the door and, after a click was heard, opened the door cautiously. "Janet?" Peeking her head, she grimaced when she saw the CMO was still sound asleep. She walked into the room and gently shook her shoulder. "Janet!"

In an instant, Janet was awake and batted the hand on her shoulder away before opening her eyes. "Alisen?" She grumbled, her voice still sleepy. Watching the young doctor take a step back, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Did something happen? Is something wrong?"

Alisen held out her hands in a reassuring gesture and shrugged. "Mackenzie called me to help out half an hour ago. There are a few new cases but it looks like he had a handle on them. I was hoping we could do the rounds before the briefing so that we don't have to take a break to check up on the patients."

"Right," she replied, her eyes darting to her alarm clock and seeing she'd forgotten to set it when she went to bed last night. She'd been exhausted after a very long day and had been more than happy to oblige with General Hammond's order to get some shuteye. In her haste, she'd managed to change clothes but apparently fell asleep the minute she touched her mattress. Considering she didn't sleep that much in her base quarters, Janet wasn't surprised the alarm hadn't been set already. "What about the lab results? Did you get a look at those?"

Taking a few respectful steps backwards as the petite CMO got out of bed, Alisen nodded and leaned against the dresser. "Yes, most confirmed what we'd already discovered but I was still surprised," she informed her.

Janet brushed her hair out of her face and gave her an expectant look. "Oh?" She inquired, walking towards her private lavatory. Quickly using the sink to splash some water on her face, she instantly felt more awake.

"At first I thought the results weren't complete or they'd forgotten to add some," she explained. "But then I conferred with Colonel MacKenzie and we went over yesterday's notes together; several people didn't show up."

Alarm bells sounded in Janet's head at hearing this and she swallowed hard, knowing she wasn't going to like what she was about to hear. "Really?"

Alisen nodded, crossing her arms and shrugged. "Yeah, of course it's possible they weren't aware of the roster or simply forgot; there were a lot of civilian scientists among them," she added with a small grin.

"What about Colonel Carter?"

"Her and MSgt Siler both were unaccounted for, together with… a Marine, I think," she replied.

"Damn," Janet muttered, frowning. "Alright, let me get dressed and I'll meet you in the infirmary in ten."

Raising a brow, Teal'c cocked his head. "Would it not be wiser to employ the help of the security station on level sixteen?"

"Eh… um," Daniel stammered a bit, stunned. "Yeah, I guess we can use the cameras to search all the corridors and rooms."

"With the exception of the personnel quarters," Janet mentioned. "Only the double occupancy rooms for officers and four to six man berths for enlisted personnel on the upper levels are monitored."

"And the civilian on-base housing on level fifteen," Daniel added, recalling how happy he'd been to hear that even though he was a civilian, he got a room on level twenty-five because he was part of on SG team.

Teal'c acknowledged that by inclining his head slightly. "Although we know Colonel Carter to be most formidable, it seems unlikely she managed to pass the security station without alerting any of the remaining personnel on that level."

"I agree," Albert Reynolds nodded. "I'll take a team with me and we'll start at level sixteen while you check out the cameras for Colonel Carter."

Giving him silent approval, Janet motioned for him to lead the way and quickly followed with Daniel and Teal'c. The elevator car was already at their level so they quickly got in and pushed the right button. After checking out the infirmary earlier with Alisen, she'd gone over the test results and made a list of all the people who were infected but not yet in isolation, as well as those who hadn't shown up for their physical exams. Then she, Doctor Warner and Alisen had gone over the names of all the infected personnel, trying to find a pattern. She knew something had been eluding her for days, but her tired mind didn't seem to be cooperating much. "Let's go," she mumbled when the elevator doors opened.

"You really think Sam is infected too?" Daniel asked worriedly.

Alisen shrugged as she was walking next to him and Janet, all three of them following the burly airmen and Teal'c. "All we know is that she didn't show up and no one has seen her recently – at least, no one who's coherent enough to tell us. If she had come to get checked out we wouldn't have known yet, since your results aren't in yet either. You were one of the last groups and we're hoping to get those this afternoon."

"Aha," he muttered. "Well, I wanted to continue doing my research, trying to find the cause of this disease. And I feel fine, by the way."

"That's what they all say," Janet teased, "before they start thumping their chests and picking fights."

"Very funny," Daniel rolled his eyes, following the others into the small monitoring room as Reynolds and his makeshift team turned into the other corridor, to check up on the security station itself.

Janet narrowed her eyes and peered at the monitors. "Can we go by each level and check all cameras present?"

"Of course, Ma'am!"

Teal'c waited for the SF to type in some commands on his keyboard, before the monitors changed. Glancing over all, he shook his head. "Perhaps we should start with the lower levels."

"Sure, why not," Janet shrugged. "Those will probably go a lot faster, considering the occupied space there and the lack of cameras in the personnel quarters."

Daniel patiently checked out all the monitors as the SF was flipping through the different levels. "How is Jack by the way?" He asked, reminded of him as they reached level twenty-five and he noticed his room on screen.

"We'll check on him once we're done here," Janet replied. "The General got a strong sedative so he'll probably wake up any time now. Might as well let him get some of his primal rage out before we go in."

"Halt," Teal'c's voice boomed in the small room. "There," he indicated O'Neill's room.

Leaning in closer, Alisen shrugged. "I don't see anything."

"Can you zoom in?" Daniel asked.

"Sure, where?"

Teal'c silently pointed at the item protruding from the wall near O'Neill's quarters.

"Did Siler do that to disable the card reader?" Daniel asked aloud, not sure if anyone could actually give him an answer.

"No," Alisen replied.

Janet shook her head as well. "It wouldn't make any sense, because he knew me and my staff needed to access the room. I don't think we can open it now."

"Are you certain?"

Looking at Teal'c, Daniel sighed as he lifted his glasses, rubbing his eyes. "Well, it's not like we can ask him now that he's affected too and in isolation. Too bad we can't find Sam, I'm sure she could fix it." Hearing Janet gasp, he looked at her, narrowing his eyes against the blurriness before placing his glasses back on his nose. "What? Teal'c?" He asked, wondering why his two friends were looking at each other with raised eyebrows. "What?"

"I shall investigate matters further," Teal'c announced, after exchanging glances with Doctor Fraiser.

"You'll probably need something to cut through that door if the security system has been short-circuited," the SF informed them, tilting the camera just so and zooming in a bit more.

Raising her brows, Alisen looked at Janet and the SF. "Won't that take forever?"

"Couple of hours," the airman replied.

"We might as well head to the infirmary and see if we can find out more about this virus before the briefing," Janet informed her, having a gut feeling about where Sam might be.

"I don't understand," Daniel mumbled. "I guess I'll just stay here and see if I can find a clue about Sam, then."

Listening to Janet and Doctor Sheffield argue their case, Daniel rubbed his neck with a small grimace. Squirming, he used his nails, hoping scratching would help against the insistent itch. Although medicine wasn't really his area of expertise, he had slowly acquired more knowledge of it over the years he'd been working at the SGC and actually didn't have a lot of trouble understanding what the doctors and researchers were all talking about. A glance around the room told him everyone was focused on the two women explaining their theory to General Hammond – who was only present via a video link.

There were several people from Dr Sheffield's genomic department, Janet and Dr Brightman were both present, Bill Lee, Felger and his assistant Chloe, the commander of the medical SG-7, Dr Hamilton – albeit a bit bruised and battered from his run-in with an infected member of his staff earlier this weekend – and Doctors Meyers, Coombs and Balinsky. The last three were apparently infected with the cold virus, because they kept sniveling during the entire briefing. Teal'c was assisting Reynolds and some of the unaffected SG teams elsewhere on base as they tracked down all the people on Janet's list who turned out to be infected and, more importantly – at least to him – Sam.

"Let's see if I understand this correctly," General Hammond's distinctive voice sounded, "you're telling me that we never actually got rid of the Touched virus, Doctors?"

"Yes and no, Sir," Janet replied, cringing at the outrage in his voice – which was understandable, since the man himself had been infected as well. "As you may recall, the Touched virus appeared to be a parasitical virus, feeding on amines and cholines, which are chemical transmitters in the body. These include neurotransmitters and when they were depleted, all but the most primitive parts of the brain seemed to just shut down. Next to that, the organism released a hormone, stimulating the primitive regions of the brain that are normally dormant."

General Hammond huffed a bit and narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I remember."

"Further testing revealed it was a histaminolytic microbe, feeding on histamine," she explained to him as well as those who were unaware of the situation back then.

"And because the Untouched had very little histamine in their blood it couldn't survive in them," Daniel added. "You and me," he gestured between Janet and himself, "were both taking antihistamines so they couldn't feed on us either, starving the microbe!" He exclaimed with a bright smile, again silently thanking the petite doctor for saving all of them from a life the Touched had been living. "Then you realized that giving everyone a high dose of antihistamines got rid of the histamine in their blood, effectively getting rid of the organism!"

Janet gnawed her lip pensively. "Yes and no," she frowned, feeling like she was beginning to repeat herself.

"Then please explain, Doctor Fraiser," General Hammond's impatient reply sounded.

"Well," she started, feeling like they were drifting away from the real subject, but obliged nonetheless. "I oversimplified the situation back then; histamine is usually stored in cells in the body, if not it's broken down quickly and only released into the tissues and blood stream in an immune response, like fighting off something foreign to the body and allergies. It's not really in the blood itself normally."

Daniel pursed his lips together and furrowed his brow in confusion. "I'm not sure if I understand…"

"The antihistamines," Janet continued, "don't deplete the body of histamines but merely block the binding of the histamines to their receptors and thus preventing an allergic reaction. When one takes antihistamines, one's blood contains more histamines because they are secreted from the cells but unable to bind and finish their reaction. The histaminolytic virus was feeding off stored histamines," she explained, emphasizing the last bit. "We're still not sure about that exact mechanism, but because the Untouched ingested antihistamines, they had less histamines stored in the cells, like Doctor Jackson and myself because of our medication, Sir."

Rubbing his chin on screen, General Hammond nodded slowly. "I see; this is how you were immune."

"Yes, well, until Doctor Jackson's medication wore off when he was among the Touched," she replied. "We assumed that in the end, with no stored histamine in the body, the organism simply died."

"But that was not the case?"

"I'm afraid not, Sir," Janet shook her head slowly, exchanging worried glances with Dr Sheffield. "My initial assessment was that the Touched virus was virulent, meaning it uses the lytic cycle for viral reproduction. This starts with penetration of the host's cell, then the viral genome is injected into the cell and viral components will be synthesized. These are assembled into complete viruses and then the cell bursts or the viruses bud off the cell membrane. Either way, the viruses go on to infect more cells, which go on to infect more cells... etcetera."

General Hammond leaned forward a bit, his bald head shining under the bright lights of his office. "Are you revising that assessment now, Doctor?"

She nodded, wringing her hands together. "Yes Sir. It appears this is exactly what happened for those who continued to take antihistamines for days, weeks or maybe even months after the infection, be that by natural antihistamines in food or simply medication. However, for those who only got the antihistamines shots to 'cure' them, the virus has been lying dormant for all these years. Virus latency is denoted as the lysogenic part of a viral life cycle, which is different from the lytic cycle as in the virus' genome actually integrates into the host's DNA. With every cell division it can be passed on to the daughter cells while remaining undetected. So, even though the virus production has ceased, the virus genome is still present and can be reactivated and begin producing large amounts of viral offspring."

Lesley Sheffield took the following silence as her cue and jumped in. "General Hammond, I'm Doctor Sheffield and I basically specialize in the DNA of alien life forms. Doctor Fraiser and I have been over all the available date together and this is what we came up with. You could compare it to Herpesviridae here on Earth, the Herpes Virus family all of which establish latent infection. Like Chicken-pox virus or Herpes Simplex viruses."

"I see," he murmured. "With all due respect, Doctor Fraiser; how is it possible this wasn't detected any sooner?"

"To be blunt, Sir," Janet replied, feeling her cheeks burn under his intense scrutiny. "We didn't know any better. We've come a long way in seven years, here at the SGC and in science in general. We knew about latent infections and were aware of Latent Associated Transcripts involved in Herpes Simplex viruses for example, but we didn't have the ability to find all the genes involved in viral latency. Even if we did, we didn't have the equipment here until a couple of years ago and couldn't risk sending alien DNA to other laboratories, Sir. Not to mention the fact that this exact type of virus and the genes we assume are responsible for the latency are basically still unheard of on Earth."

Lesley bobbed her head emphatically too. "The only reason we learned about it now is that the latent virus seems to have been triggered by a different virus, most likely what shows as a cold in people who were never infected with the Touched virus, General. Together, these viruses reacted and the original virus mutated into what is causing the symptoms we see now."

General Hammond seemed to process this and a soft murmur arose in the briefing room, until he spoke up again. "Have you been able to locate the origin of this other virus?"

"Ah, I think maybe that's where we come in, General," Daniel replied, gesturing between him and some of his colleagues. "Our department has been going over the last missions, trying to determine who brought this virus back and if the carrier team was actually some sort of Trojan horse. Doctor Fraiser and her staff suggested that because symptoms of common colds usually begin two to five days after initial infection, we had to look back at least a week and considering this was most likely an alien virus, we took the precaution of going back two weeks."

"And what have you found, Doctor Jackson?"

He sighed and opened the folder in front of him. "Well, we also checked with the infirmary to see when the first people started complaining of a cold… all this, combined with what we know of the Touched virus and the Land of Light, we think SG-6 brought back the virus, eight days ago from P2x-913."

"We confirmed they were carriers of the innocent cold virus and at first we thought they had gotten infected on Earth. We even feared for the population of said planet for a moment, until they reassured us they were unharmed once we reestablished contact with them," Alisen Brightman added.

"That is exactly what got me thinking," Daniel chimed in, bobbing his head enthusiastically. "Their culture was Minoan, like the Land of Light."

"Even the native name for their land, the Bright Plains sounds similar," Nyan offered.

Glancing at his research assistant, Daniel nodded. "Yes and when we went over the material and reports SG-6 had provided, we found even more similarities. Their capital is called Cnossus, probably after Knossos Palace, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and a political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture, Sir!"

Janet glanced from her friend to the video screen showing General Hammond and recognized the man's subtle facial expression. Obviously he didn't really care about the culture on the planet when his own people were in danger.

"Doctors, does any of this bring us any closer to finding a cure?"

"We haven't found anything yet, Sir," she regretted to inform him.

Daniel, too, shook his head. "No, Sir. But I think the answer is on the planet and I believe we should go back to investigate!"

"Son, you're not going anywhere until this situation has been cleared up. A lockdown means no one in and no one out, whether that's through the regular doors or a wormhole," General Hammond replied sternly. "Doctor Fraiser, how are the patients?"

"Well, they are sedated now. Most of the time actually," she admitted. "Doctor MacKenzie realized that once their more primitive urges have been fulfilled to satisfaction, they become easier to handle, often relaxing or sleeping. Luckily this has enabled us to apprehend most of them without inflicting much harm."

General Hammond nodded pensively. "I regret to inform you that two of our people have been killed, trying to escape the mountain. They tried taking a hostage, one of the researchers from NORAD, who was shot too, but it was a flesh wound and he's been admitted to the Academy Hospital."

A respectful silence descended upon the room, which Janet broke after a minute. "Yes Sir," she nodded, as she'd already been updated by Colonel Reynolds this morning. The two SFs had been working here since the inception of the program and had been assigned to guard the security checkpoint. She had been unaware of the status of the two men, but since she knew a Code Five had been initiated, she assumed they hadn't lived. "Colonel Reynolds and Teal'c found their escape route and have made it impenetrable."

"I'm pleased to hear it," he mumbled, obviously also bothered by the two deaths.

She turned around when Colonel Raimi, the CO of SG-22 peeked his head around the door and tried to get her attention. "Excuse me for a moment, Sir," she waited for a curt nod of his head and went to the door.

"Doctor Fraiser, Colonel Reynolds asked me to inform you they were almost through the door of General O'Neill's quarters."

"Thank you, Colonel," she replied, frowning. Holding up her hand, she turned back to General Hammond. "General, Sir, Colonel Reynolds asked for my assistance-"

"Of course, Doctor Fraiser, dismissed."

Daniel narrowed his eyes, trying to gauge what was going on with Raimi and Janet, but he couldn't see their expressions in the dimly lit briefing room. "General Hammond, if I may?" He asked, gesturing towards his colleagues.