A/N: Life happened this week and made the chapter slow to finish. Post holiday cleaning, project due at work, concert week... it all conspired against me and my writing life. The good new is, I'm trying to work fast from here on to finish the story by the end of the month. Hopefully, by Christmas, but I'm not making any promises. Thanks for sticking with me. The end is in sight. :0)
Disclaimer: They're still not mine.
Warning! Life is like a bunch of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Well, that's not really true. You know if you hate coconut, that's the first one you'll bite into. How that relates to life, I'm not sure. I guess I'll let you come to your own conclusions there.
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"Mark Carter?" he asked, handing the man his newspaper.
"Yes," the man said. "May I help you?"
"Oh, I think you may be able to help me a great deal." In a flash, his hand struck out and encircled Mark's neck. Blue eyes widened as Mark felt himself lifted from the ground.
Three steps took them inside the house. The heavy door slammed shut behind them.
Ba'al pressed Mark up against the wall beside the door and reached into his pocket with his free hand. It slipped easily into the device. The gold fingertips fit snugly over his own; the round disc nestled firmly in the fold of his palm.
His face settled between a smile and a snarl as he removed his hand from his pocket and raised the device to hover in front of Mark's terrified face. "Tell me," he said, "where can I find your sister?"
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The Ninth Chevron
Chapter Twenty-Six
"I don't know why I haven't done this before now," Carter said. She put the lid back on another box and pushed it to the side to get at the one underneath. She looked tired, but she'd handled herself well all afternoon.
Jack knew what she was talking about. He still had things of Charlie's in boxes in his attic. His wife's father had boxed them up for him and brought them by after the separation. At the time, it had been all he could do to even touch them long enough to haul them into storage. He imagined if he went through them now it wouldn't hurt nearly as bad as it would have then.
Carter's mother had been gone a long time. She'd had plenty of time to distance herself.
He picked up a couple of quilt blocks from the bottom of his own box and held them up.
Carter smiled and took them out of his hands. "These were always lying around the house when I was growing up."
"A Carter a quilter?" Jack raised his eyebrows and returned her answering smile.
"Yes. She quilted." She tucked the squares into her jeans pocket. "I knit."
That got Jack's attention. "You knit?" He grinned.
"Yes." She met his eyes with a challenge in her own, almost daring him to say something about it.
"When?" He crossed his arms in front of him and sat back against the row of boxes behind him.
"Sometimes," she said. "…when I'm at home… and not busy with something else."
"Uh, huh."
"Ok. So, I don't find time to do it much." She held a finger out at him. "But I do know how."
Jack chuckled and turned back to his nearly empty box.
They'd been at it for hours. He wondered how many more of these boxes they'd have to go through before they found what Carter thought they were looking for. Despite their banter, something Jack made sure to maintain in order to lighten the atmosphere, he'd seen Carter's mood darken a little more each time she opened a new box. It wasn't her mother's things that bothered her most, he could tell. It was the pictures of Jacob she ran across. The medals. The marriage certificate.
Jacob's death was just too recent for her to be sifting through his wife's things.
Jack put the items back into the box, then lifted the lid off yet another one. He removed a photo album off the top to reveal a bunch of papers twelve inches thick. Pay dirt.
"Carter."
She must have heard the urgency in his voice because she looked up alertly. "Sir?" She stood and stepped around the stacks so she could peer down into his box. "This is promising," she mumbled.
He nodded and reached inside to grab a stack. He handed it off to Carter before taking another for himself. He heard her move back to her perch atop a step-stool nearby. She plopped her bounty down on the tall metal trunk at its feet.
"You know," he said, "if we're not right about this we're back to square one."
Her eyes flicked his way and then went back to perusing the papers he'd given her. "Your point?"
He shrugged. "Don't really have one. Just saying…"
"It's got to be here, sir. Dad wanted me to find something. I know it."
"Then I know it, too, Colonel." He thumbed through the top of his stack. It seemed Carter had been a do-gooder starting in Kindergarten judging by the yellowed report cards he found held together by a rubber band. He put them aside and moved on.
"There's one thing that's been bugging me, Carter."
Sam's eyebrow shot up. "Just one thing, sir?"
Jack nodded. "This time."
He caught Carter's attempt to hide a smirk.
"If the chapter and verse were all you needed to figure out where to look," he continued, "then why mention Mark at all? It seems a bit unnecessary to put his name out there for evil eyes to see."
Carter shrugged. "Actually, without the name I wouldn't have known what to look for, really."
"Why not?" Jack finished with the papers in his stack and pushed them aside. He dug back into the box for some more.
"Just knowing the date wasn't enough. It could have meant dad hid something at mom's grave or where we lived when she died, or any number of other places. Mark can't know anything about the Stargate or dad's other life. Since dad dropped his name, I figured it had to be an object he left with Mark. Most likely an obvious one he'd never suspect had been tampered with… and what object is most associated with the date of a person's death?"
Jack's eyes widened as they fell on the object inside a long white envelope. He held it up to Carter. "A death certificate," he said. He pulled out a folded paper.
"You found it?"
"I found it."
She eyed the document like it was a snake about to strike, but reached out and took it from him anyway. "Anything in the envelope?" she asked.
He peeked inside and shook his head. "Nada. Just that." He gestured to the certificate in her hands.
She sighed and carefully opened it up. Folded neatly inside was a small scrap of paper.
Jack stood and moved so he could read over her shoulder. The note was clearly written in Jacob's handwriting.
"Look near the faintest jewel of Friggerock." Carter looked up at him with questioning eyes.
Jack shrugged. "Don't look at me. I just work here." He glanced around the dusty attic. "Well, not here."
Carter ignored him. "Friggerock must have something to do with Frigga." She tucked the small paper in with the quilt squares she'd pocketed and refolded the death certificate.
Jack took it from her and slipped it back into its envelope. "Makes sense. Let's hope Daniel can figure it out. You know he loves a good riddle."
Carter nodded at him and stood again. The attic floor creaked under their combined weight. "Let's get out of here. I don't feel comfortable staying in one place too long."
"We're on Earth, Carter. What could possibly happen to us in sunny California?"
The floor at their feet erupted in a blast of heat and shattered wood. Jack recognized the distinctive sound of a hand device letting loose again. Another explosion burst so close he smelt the singed hair on his arm.
Jack rushed at Carter and pushed her back until they both hugged the wall. He stood close beside her and threw out his arm in a pathetic attempt to shield her as the next shot tore through the floor and destroyed the box he'd pulled the certificate from. Pieces of cardboard, paper, and ash rained down on them.
"Sir, if you ever say something like that again, remind me to shoot you." Carter pulled her pistol from her shoulder holster and aimed it downward.
Jack winced and did the same, though he knew there was no way their guns would hold a candle to a hand device.
He read in Carter's face that she'd figured the same. Still, she fired off shots through the thin attic floor anyway.
They were sitting ducks up here.
Hand device meant Goa'uld. Goa'uld and current circumstances meant Ba'al. "Man, I hate him."
Carter nodded and shot him a worried gaze. "Mark's down there, sir."
Jack sympathized, but reality wasn't pretty. "If Ba'al's upstairs in the bedroom, chances are your brother's already been… neutralized."
He didn't miss Carter's wince. Her eyes darkened. "Right."
"Colonel Carter." Ba'al's jovial voice rose up from the floor below. He chuckled. "Your brother tells me you've been up to your elbows in your parents' things all afternoon."
Carter didn't flinch.
"Tell me, did dad leave us anything interesting to find?"
Another blast shot through the floor. This one was closer to them and they had to press back against the wall to avoid being hit. The blast rushed up and slammed into the thin boards lying crosswise over the beams above them. Another box exploded and sent slivers of shattered glass down on their heads.
Jack closed his eyes against the assault and felt the bite as several shards cut through the skin on his face and hands. He opened his eyes again and took in the bright colors now littering the floor. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas," he said.
"Very funny, sir. You're not going to find out anything if you kill us," she yelled.
"I'm not trying to kill you." Ba'al's voice came from directly under them now. "I just want you to join me down here." The Goa'uld punctuated his statement with a burst from the hand device. The floor at their feet, already weakened by his previous assault, moaned.
Jack didn't have time to move before it gave under his feet. He felt the shattered wood scrape him through his clothes as he fell down into the room below.
OoOoOoOoO
Sam's heart fell with Jack when he went through the floor. Shit.
Without thinking, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone.
"Sam." Daniel's voice answered after only one ring.
"Ba'al's here. He's got my brother and the General."
There was only a moment of silence. "We'll be there in five minutes. Where are you?"
"Attic."
"We're coming." The phone went silent. Sam pocketed it and grasped her gun with both hands.
"Colonel," Ba'al called out. "While I like O'Neill's company, it's not really why I'm here."
"Why don't you come on up then?" Her eyes darted across the room for anything that could help her. All the way across the attic she saw something.
"I'd rather you came down here." The hand device began firing again.
Sam jumped across the hole Jack had fallen through and ran for the opposite wall. The blasts kept coming. One right after another. The floor below her screamed and shook with every step. Fire burst to life amidst the boxes. It spread quickly. The heat snagged her sweater and it ignited. She shrugged out of it and kept running even as the assault from below continued to pour up through the floor.
It was only seconds before she reached the other wall, but it felt like much longer.
She stopped and holstered her gun before ramming her elbow through the glass of the small attic window. It cut through her skin, but she ignored the pain and pushed the jagged glass away from the pane.
Sudden pain raced along her leg, caught from below. She fell and her broken rib screamed. A quick glance told her she'd just been winged.
The buckling floor and growing inferno told her she didn't have time to lick her wounds. She reached up to the window frame and pulled herself up.
As quickly as she could, she stuck one leg out the opening, grabbed on to the frame as tightly as she could, and pulled her body the rest of the way out. She lowered herself as slowly as she could until she hung loosely from the window.
Glass dug into her hands where they gripped the pane. She looked down. It would be a long fall. It would hurt. She had no other choice.
Sam closed her eyes and let go.
OoOoOoOoO
Jack pushed himself up into a sitting position. His sides and chest were on fire. From the smell of things, they weren't alone. He looked up and saw smoke pouring down from the hole in the attic floor.
His head spun.
"You stupid sack of…"
"Now, General. That's no way to speak to a god." Ba'al didn't portray any sense of urgency. Sick self-assured snakehead with delusions of immortality…
"You and I both know you're no god."
"I know no such thing," Ba'al said.
"You know she won't come down," Jack said.
"I do realize that."
"She'll die up there before she gives you what you want." He almost choked on the words. The air grew increasingly heavy with black smoke. He shook his head. "I don't know what you think you're going to find…"
"I think you know there's a lot more than a power source at the end of this little treasure hunt."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "I do?"
"While I intend to use the device to its full potential, it will pale in comparison to what lies on the other side of the Stargate it opens."
Jack felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He didn't like the sound of that.
Ba'al looked up at the ceiling and then drew his eyes back to Jack. "You can order her to come down."
"She won't."
The Goa'uld took a step closer to Jack. Ba'al's hand stretched out to point the device at his forehead. "Order her."
He couldn't order her to step out of one fire and into another. God help him. He shook his head.
Ba'al's eyes flashed. Only for a second. Then they narrowed. "You were with her. What did you find?"
Jack shrugged. "A lot of dust."
Ba'al's gaze didn't leave him while he weighed his options. Even as pompous as the Goa'uld was, the fire had to speed things up for him. Jack saw the decision light his eyes. "Leave her to burn then. I have you." He raised the weapon to gesture for Jack to move. "Downstairs."
It was Jack's turn to weigh his options.
There was a window. He remembered it. A way out. He'd have to trust that Carter could fend for herself.
There wasn't anything else he could do. With one last look at the ceiling, he rose off the floor and stepped past Ba'al, the weapon trained on him the entire time. He could hear the roar of the growing fire above as he left the bedroom and headed down the hall towards the stairs.
OoOoOoOoO
Sam tried to curl her body protectively around her broken rib, but it didn't help much as she slammed feet first into the bushes at the edge of the house. The air rushed from her lungs at the impact and she fought to draw a breath.
A hand fell on her shoulder and she jumped, grabbing for her gun in its holster.
"Sam. It's us." Daniel's face swam into view. "We saw you fall. Are you ok?"
Sam had to think about that one for a moment. Her whole body was screaming the word 'rib.' Her leg burned and her hands reminded her they'd spent time getting intimate with the glass in the window. Then her thoughts went to Mark and the General.
"I'm fine," she said.
Teal'c's eyebrow rose under the rim of his black knit cap, but he reached down a hand to help her up.
"I don't know where Mark is. Ba'al was upstairs and the General fell down through the floor into the room he was in." She took a deep breath, still trying to fill her lungs. "Teal'c," she motioned to the left. "Take the front door."
He nodded.
Sam thought briefly about her lost sweater. "Daniel, my phone is probably melted in that fire by now. We'll both need to go in through the kitchen." Another deep breath.
Daniel eyed her. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"Yes, I'm fine." Sam couldn't hide her frustration. "I just fell two stories with a broken rib. I'm just trying to catch my breath."
Neither man looked satisfied, but they readied to move anyway.
"Wait for the signal to move in. We need to know where they are before we act."
Teal'c nodded and crouched down before running quickly around the corner to the front of the house. Once he was out of sight Sam nodded to Daniel. He picked a small piece of the bush from her hair before he raised his gun at the ready. They took off in the opposite direction.
Sam glanced up. Smoke billowed from the upper floors now. If someone hadn't called the fire department yet, it was only a matter of minutes before they did. They needed to detain Ba'al before anyone arrived. That gave them almost no time.
Sam and Daniel approached the door at the back of the house. She tried the handle and found it unlocked. The smoke detectors screamed from inside. She didn't have to worry about noise as she opened the door and stepped into her brother's expensive kitchen.
The wood floors shined with fresh polish and the marble countertops reflected the pots and pans that hung from the rack over the center island. Its perfection belied the violent fire raging just two floors above them. She was grateful Mark's family was out of town visiting his wife's sister. The situation could definitely be worse.
She felt Daniel's presence beside her and moved deeper into the room toward the door that led to the living room.
Voices reached out to her from the other side.
"What is going on? Did you see his eyes? Why does his voice sound like that?" Mark's voice was bordering on panic. Sam let out a sigh of relief. He was alive.
Jack's voice was calm. "Listen to me, Mark. Just do what he asks and you'll be fine. I won't let anything happen to you."
She heard Ba'al's answering laugh. "You don't have a say, O'Neill. I find it comical that you would even think you do." She heard Mark's pained yelp. "See? Something happened to him. Did you stop it? No." He laughed again. Sam could picture Jack's face at that. It had probably turned murderous.
She could tell from the silence she was right. Jack always joked when he was angry. When it went beyond anger, he shut up.
Sam cracked the door open a bit to peek into the room. Mark was slouched down half across the couch looking bleary-eyed. Blood streamed from his nose and there were dark bruises forming around his throat, but he looked okay. Jack knelt on the floor beside him. His hands were tied behind his back with what looked like a computer cord. Ba'al stood at the window, apparently waiting for something.
"It won't be long now," he told the two of them. "I dared not risk using my transporter twice on this island, what with the military base right around the corner. Now that my detection is imminent, however, I find it is necessary to make a quick exit."
"Then why don't you go? Don't feel you need to keep in touch." Jack's voice was raw. He'd managed to reign in some of his anger, but not all.
"I will go. As soon as the ship arrives. I had it stay out of sight, so to speak, until I needed it." He smiled down at Jack. "As I said, it won't be long now."
Sam heard the wail of sirens in the distance. Ba'al was right. It wouldn't be long. She nodded to Daniel. He spoke into his phone. Teal'c burst through the front door, gun drawn. Carter and Daniel rushed in at the same time.
The three men in the living room barely had time to look up.
Sam wouldn't soon forget the satisfied look on Ba'al's face as he and Jack were surrounded by the white light of an Asgard transporter. Sam blinked and they were both gone.
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I'm already pushing to the end of the next chapter. I don't foresee anything getting in the way of it being posted tomorrow. Thanks to the wonderful new posters I had with the last couple of chapters. It's nice to hear your voices... err... see your voices... uh... read your opinions. :0)