'You've got a warm heart,
you've got a beautiful brain.
But it's disintegrating,
from all the medicine.'
"Medicine" ~ Daughter
"Psychotropic. That's it!"
"Hmwha?" Sam's head jerked off her folded arms. "Sorry…"
Carolyn Lam smiled and ignored Cam's chuckles. "It's alright, Colonel. These tests have taken hours."
Sam glanced around from where she'd fallen asleep on the other side of Lam's microscope. The clock read just after one am.
Cam had parked his chair next to her, Sudoku book in his lap with different, spidery style handwriting, evidence he'd stolen it from Daniel's suitcase. He winked when Sam's bleary gaze landed on him.
Teal'c meditated in the corner.
Sam's lips twitched. "Electric candles? Really?"
Lam followed Sam's eyes and scowled. "No fire in my lab. He knows the rules."
Teal'c opened his eyes and inclined his head.
Carolyn's face softened. "Maybe next time, though."
"What a Gandhi," Cam muttered, eyes twinkling and affectionate on Teal'c. "You can make a drowning cat love you."
"I have learned from the best," said Teal'c.
Sam and Cameron stiffened.
Daniel. Sam fingered the 'A' shaped symbol pendant around her neck. Just give us some time, Daniel. This was becoming a mission to get him back as much as the general.
"Psychotropics?" she asked aloud instead, refocusing everyone on the task at hand. They huddled around the table. Sam fingered the prescription bottle. "Is that what these are?"
Carolyn's lips pressed. "Yes and no."
The other three turned startled eyes on her.
She held up a toxicology read out. "What I mean is that I've never seen anything like it. Under certain conditions, though, it acts like a psychotropic. A very, very…very strong psychotropic. Only these seem to accelerate natural bpm rather than sedate. And this bottle is almost empty. They've been building up in O'Neill's system for quite some time."
"That would explain the pajama-Taser combo," said Cam.
"No." Sam frowned. "It doesn't. Even if General O'Neill's mind is being messed with, it wouldn't explain why he targeted the base."
"Are you kidding?" Cam flung out an arm to gesture to the room, the base. "His whole life was here until two years ago! I don't know where else he could go."
"Then why come here to harm?" Sam pressed. "Why did he have a clear plan for a surgical attack like this? Psychotropics can't account for such a strong motivation. A one-track motivation at that. If anything, they tend to muddle decision making."
Cam shrugged. "Someone planted the attack in his head."
"Who?" asked Sam. "We searched that house and there was no evidence the lock had been tampered with. Nothing missing. He doesn't have any friends who know about the program other than us."
They all stared at each other, faces grim. Sam could save a whole planet from black holes and dimensional shifts but she was lost in the face of this mystery.
"I wish I could tie up, in a neat little ribbon, what this is." Carolyn's eyes swam with an apology. "But these pills are a combination of substances I've only just begun to break down into their molecular components. Some elements are, well, alien. For lack of a better word."
"No offense, big guy." Cam tapped Teal'c on the stomach with the back of his hand.
"None taken," said the Jaffa, tone wry.
"Why would the general willingly ingest a foreign substance?" Sam paced to the door and back. "He was hesitant to take a Tylenol when we were on active duty, let alone prescription meds."
Carolyn's eyes circled the room and she grinned.
"What?" asked Cam. "Don't leave a guy in suspense."
"I don't need to know one iota of what is in this bottle," said Carolyn. "I got your next lead without it."
Even Teal'c looked confused. Confused and hopeful. Just like at the house, Sam found his mood a contagion, pumping through her with the grace of a beautiful virus.
She grinned too. "Oh, Carolyn. You're good."
"Thank you," said the doctor.
"I don't know why I didn't notice it before, honestly."
"Must be all the coffee. A crash like that isn't good for you."
"Come on!" Cam griped, but he looked years younger with the humour of it all. "What are us dunderheads missing? Uh, no offense Teal'c."
"…Some taken."
"The bottle's label," said Carolyn, putting the man out of his misery. "It's got a psychiatrist's name on it. The man who prescribed it."
Stunned silence fell over them. That it could be so simple.
"Well," said Cam. "He's fishy if he's got some alien drug the medical community has never even heard of."
Sam patted her friend's shoulder. "That's why I'm putting my best man on the case."
Cam groaned, but his face lit up like Christmas came early.
Footsteps approached from outside the tent and shadows morphed and shrank under a torch's light. Daniel glanced up.
A wizened face appeared in the tent flap. The browned hand held his torch just out of reach of the nylon.
Daniel sighed. "Hello again, Shamda."
The village elder's eyes fussed over Daniel like a wayward child. "I'm sorry you could not find what you are looking for in our Vis Uban."
Daniel shrugged one shoulder, picking at his—at Jack's—sweater cuffs. "I'll head out in the morning to the coordinates you gave him."
"We cared for you once, as Arrom, until your memories returned," said Shamda. The lines around his eyes were a tree's rings. Sacred and ancient. "This is something different. This is an inability to forget anguished memories. My heart grieves with yours."
"I…I'm not grieving," said Daniel. He adjusted his glasses. "I'm doing this because someone has to. This man, he used to be my friend. But he can't seem to last a week without getting into trouble."
"It's funny," said Shamda softly. "He expressed almost the same thing about you."
Daniel looked away.
Shamda's face suddenly paled. "Used to be your friend?"
"It's a long story," said Daniel, quiet and small.
"I have much time." Shamda matched the tone.
"I don't, Shamda. Neither does Jack. Please, you must remember more. Tell me again what happened."
Shamda tapped at his forehead. "O'Neill stumbled through the ring with a most pained expression. We tried to help him but he was determined. He needed something from us. A circle within a circle. An…orb…I think he said."
Daniel shuffled out of his sleeping back and into Vis Uban's balmy night so fast his head spun. He gripped Shamda's biceps.
His eyes flared with something aghast and childishly balking. "A Scrambler, Shamda? Did he call it a Scrambler?"
"Yes," Shamda whispered. "That's exactly what he called it."
"Ooohhh…"
"Daniel!"
It was Shamda's turn to grip Daniel when his knees gave out. A prickly sweat fused Daniel's undershirt to his skin.
"Breathe deeply, Daniel. That's it…"
Shamda sat Daniel on the ground and shoved his head between his knees.
Two tiny grains of sand had burrowed under Daniel's thumbnail in a duet of gritty pain. It was a grounding feeling amidst a swirl of colours and quivering splatter of stars in the night's sky.
Everything dipped and lurched. He panted, forcing his head up.
"Have…oooohhhh." Daniel took off his glasses and tried not to vomit. "Have you ever heard of this orb, Shamda?"
The elder knelt and stroked hair from Daniel's forehead, his wrinkles oddly soft. Daniel realized with an abrupt jolt that Shamda was copying what Jack had done when they first came to bring his descended self back home.
Back then, that comfort was the only thing that convinced Daniel SG-1 was his family.
Daniel had to swallow three times before the sandy landscape stopped blurring. He wiped the corner of his eye on his sleeve.
"There are legends of such time twins," said Shamda, "but the dark eyed men knew more."
Daniel's calculated breathing escaped in a rush and hairs stood up on his arms. So many questions erupted from this sentence that Daniel flushed.
"Shamda, what—how—twins? Wait, no, I'm sorry, let's start with the men. Dark eyed? They were dark eyed like your people?"
Shamda shook his head again, expression stormy. His finger looped an oval around his eyes and brows. "Very big eyes. They reflected the sun."
"Sunglasses! They were wearing frames with arms, er, sticks along their ears? Like my glasses here?"
"Yes!" Shamda lit up. "That's it! And they wore dark, tailored clothing. Much like yours. Only they carried weapons and bulky chest pieces."
Daniel decided not to mention the Beretta in his boot. He bit his lip. "How many men were there, Shamda?"
"Only three. They came out of the ring shortly after O'Neill and we lost track of them in the wilderness. They hid. Then, when O'Neill dialed new coordinates, they rushed through the ring's water before we could stop them."
"This is very bad," said Daniel.
"Why? Aren't they friends?"
Daniel stood to his feet. "I don't know. But the way you describe them, they sound like a tactical team. Well trained and better prepared than me."
Shamda patted Daniel's brow again. "These men were cold, efficient. They did not care for O'Neill as you do. That is your greatest advantage."
"I don't care about Jack," Daniel bit out.
Shamda nodded but didn't seem to buy it any more than Daniel did.
For a long time the crackle of Shamda's torch was the only sound. The village tents flapped against Daniel's. Canvas on nylon, ancient against modern. He really was the alien here.
"Twins?" Daniel asked quietly. "There were two orbs in legend? We found only one on…on a different planet. I got stranded there once."
"We discovered this legend on the abandoned city walls." Shamda bowed his head. "As you well know, this planet belonged to a great civilization. Much more advanced than ours is, at least for now."
Daniel frowned. "It doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't?" asked Shamda.
"How would Jack have known about a second Scrambler? We thought we'd destroyed the only one."
Shamda's sudden smile seemed so out of place that vertigo assaulted Daniel again.
"Do you not know how cosmic artifacts work?"
"Apparently I don't know anything," said Daniel, flat.
"My dear child, even stargates, as you call them, need a destination—need a companion. It only makes sense that something like the orb has a partner too. Offspring of the stars are never alone."
The weight of these words didn't impact Daniel's already stuttering heart until Shamda planted his torch in the sand and pulled him into a quick embrace.
Daniel hugged back but his arms felt like putty. His breathing skipped.
"We are all children of time," whispered Shamda. "Why do you think you landed here in your fall from the heavens, hmm?"
When he stepped back and gave a soft smile, Daniel sensed he was missing the bigger picture.
Trying to create logic of Jack's head space had left Daniel tired and weary. He couldn't fathom if he'd ever make it to Earth again. It scared him more that he didn't care if he did.
"Why did you send Jack to the other planet?" asked Daniel, to cut off this stampeding thought.
"Because that is where our people stayed once and, I'm assuming, the makers of these…these Scramblers."
Daniel's brow scrunched. "You know where your people sojourned?"
"Of course," said Shamda. "The coordinate symbols have been passed down for generations. As elder, I am now the keeper of those symbols. I gave them and the story of both Scramblers to Jack not because of his desperation, but because of his grief. His appalling loss."
"Loss of what?" Daniel barked. "He knows nothing of sacrifice. Only self-serving."
"Is that what torments you both so?"
Daniel looked away. "Two years ago, we were called out of an informal sabbatical to go on a mission. They needed my expertise and Jack…he wouldn't let me go alone.
"I was afraid of the 'gate after spending centuries trying to get home. He helped me with that phobia and we made it through. Everything was going fine. But when we got to the planet they…he…"
It had been eighteen months, eighteen months of long silences and no one to turn to, but Daniel realized this was the first time he'd ever spoken of that mission aloud.
Screams echoed between his ears. He felt Jack's arm around his waist, his own fingers clawing it to bloody stripes. Cam was on the ground but he didn't look right, half of his whole.
"…niel?"
There was blood on Cam's face but it wasn't his.
"Daniel?"
Warmth blossomed along Daniel's back. The horror replay was replaced with a fire-warmed blanket. It enveloped his frame while a gnarled hand tucked in the edges.
"Shamda," he said. His voice was a reed in a soft breeze.
"Dear child," said the elder. "Your soul is weary."
Daniel couldn't argue with that. He sat up and wiped blood off his face that wasn't there. "I'm sorry, Shamda. You've been wonderful, but I was foolish to think I could leave tomorrow. Jack can't wait that long. The trail will be cold by then."
Stumbling, Daniel began to dig his tent spikes out of the sand. He packed up with a flustered accuracy, well practiced motions sabotaged by grief and fear.
"Jackson, are you certain? Your spirit is not well."
"Nope," said Daniel. "But neither is Jack's. He's not dying on my watch."
Shamda chuckled with an exasperated roll of his eyes. "Arrom. You are always leaving us for adventures."
For the first time since this whole fiasco, Daniel's smile was broad and genuine. "Thank you, Shamda. You've been better than I deserve."
Shamda pressed a strip of parchment in Daniel's hand, cluttered by seven charcoal symbols. Then he captured Daniel's face between his palms. "Go find the pair."
