Chapter Twelve - Grace

Six months ago

"O'Neill!"

Grace flinched at the strident sound of the Colorado Springs Chronicle editor's voice. She may have been at the newspaper for almost five years now, but she hadn't managed to acclimate to Norman Baker's temper.

The editor slapped a stapled packet of papers on her desk. "What the hell is this?"

Grace didn't dare look in the folder. "One of my stories?"

"Yes. One you apparently decided to email me at two-thirty this morning."

Grace searched her memory. She'd sent a story at two-thirty? She could have sworn she'd been asleep by ten, exhausted by a day of following news stories. "I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again."

Norman's face was almost purple with rage. "You better believe it won't."

Grace's stomach clenched. Something told her Norman was suggesting she was going to be fired. "Norman, sometimes, I get enthusiastic about my work. You can't fault me for that."

Norman's voice grew quiet. "No, O'Neill, I can't fault you for that."

Grace grimaced. Things were going to get really bad if Norman stopped yelling.

"But you know what I can fault you for? Not doing your job. You see, you're not my feature reporter. You're my human interest puff piece reporter." He picked up the document again. "I don't know about you, but this doesn't sound like a human interest story. Child of Local Congressman Missing."

Grace paled. She hadn't written anything about children going missing. Sure, she wanted to do some harder hitting journalism, but she was generally content with covering local town traditions, mom and pop restaurants, and so forth. "Can I see that?"

Norman frowned at her. "Not just yet. As if that isn't bad enough, you got the date wrong. You're a whole twenty-four hours early."

Grace's blood ran cold as Norman thrust the document into her face.

She scanned the words with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Allison Duncan, the six-year-old daughter of US Congressman Alexander Duncan, went missing while in the park with her grandmother yesterday.

Her gift. She hadn't had a vision disturb her dreams in over a decade, and now, she was staring at a future news article. One which she'd apparently submitted to her editor. "Norman, has anyone contacted the Congressman about this story?"

Norman glared at her. "What do you think I am? Your personal fact checker?"

She recognized her mistake immediately. "I'll fix this, Norman."

Norman didn't seem even slightly appeased. "You'd better. Otherwise, you can find yourself another job."

Grace watched him go, a bubble panic rising in her chest before she reached for her phone. "Hey, Dad? I need your help."

Present Day

Grace groaned, then coughed, as she slowly gained consciousness. Everything ached, and she knew somehow that if she were to move, she might be able to work out some of the pain.

"Don't move."

A hand, that fit in hers as if it had been molded to perfection, slipped into her grasp as another hand brushed away the matted curls from her face.

She let her eyes flutter open, an involuntary smile lifting the corner of her lip when she saw someone who looked an awful lot like Trevor wearing light-colored middle eastern robes. "Am I dreaming?"

That familiar wry smile. "No, but you did give us quite a scare. How are you feeling?"

She closed her eyes, allowing her brain to do a quick inventory of how she felt. It didn't take long before she groaned again. "Awful."

Trevor's expression softened into compassion, but there was something more in his expression. Relief, maybe? "Yeah, well, today that just means you're alive. That's a good thing."

Grace squinted as she looked around at her surroundings. "Where are we?"

"Well, like we suspected, we're in Giza, 1928. I double-checked."

Despite the haze in her brain, she remembered that much. "I meant the tent. We didn't have one of those."

Trevor held onto her hand like it was the last lifeline to normalcy. "Professor Paul Langford and his daughter, Catherine, are our hosts."

She eyed him as the information unspooled in her brain. "I thought you didn't want to go to the dig because of causality."

"I didn't, but I wasn't going to let you die."

She smiled as she squeezed his hand. "Careful. I'm gonna start thinking you're awfully romantic if you keep talking about how you saved me."

Trevor rolled his eyes, though there was a seriousness in them that hadn't been there the last time she'd looked at them. "They had a doctor at the dig who could help you with your scorpion sting reaction, and they fed us. Also gave us some kind of salve for our sunburns."

Grace gripped his hand as panic set in. "Doctor?"

Trevor nodded. "Yeah. You needed one. You were gasping for breath. If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect you're allergic to scorpion stings. Or at least the venom of this particular breed."

Grace shifted, attempting to sit up. "I have to go. I can't be here."

She coughed again, and Trevor pressed her back into the cot. "I don't think you should get up right now. Frankly, the doctor wasn't sure you'd make it even after everything he did."

Grace tried to wriggle out of his grasp. "Trevor, I mean it. I can't—The only doctor I should be seeing is Cassandra."

"Well, she'd not here, and you nearly died." Trevor studied get. "You're welcome, by the way."

Grace groaned as she tried to sit up again. "Trevor, I'm not most people. This guy could have killed me. Inadvertently, sure, but killed me all the same."

Trevor frowned. "Is this about that nonsense about you getting kidnapped because of your test results?"

She finally got upright, but swayed a little in his embrace.

"Whoa..." Trevor sat beside her on the bed and stabilized her.

Grace closed her eyes in self-deprecation. "Get me back to the car, Trevor. I can't be here."

"Why not? What the hell has you so freaked out about seeing a physician?"

"You wouldn't understand."

Trevor glared at her. "If I never hear that phrase again, it'll be too soon."

Grace tried to push away from him, but her breathing grew somewhat labored as she looked around the tent. "Is it just us?"

"Yeah. Dr. Fleming said something about gathering herbs for your sunburns." He raised his arm. "It reeks, but it works."

Grace leaned into him, uneasy in his embrace, but admitting to herself that it was a necessary evil. She still couldn't get a full breath, and Trevor was the only one who could help her get out of there. "There can't be any trace of me here. That will change the timeline."

"What makes you so sure?"

Grace groaned. "I can't explain it."

Trevor's expression hardened. "Try."

She could feel what little energy she had managed to accumulate with her rest leech out of her. "I get these feelings. Sometimes, they even come as visions. It's how I knew what you were thinking on the ridge. And I'm here to tell you that if I stay here much longer, it's going to be disastrous for the time-space continuum. Just like you were worried about."

Trevor took a breath, his grip tightening on her. "I know how this is going to sound, and believe me, I don't mean for it to be insulting, but what's so special about you that knowledge of you could rewrite time as we know it?"

Grace's eyes started to close of their own volition. She was just so tired. "Trevor, I just need you to trust me."

He gently shook her and forced her to look him in the eye. "I trust you, but if I don't understand why you need to get scrubbed from this spot. Which is going to impact my ability to help you achieve your goals."

Grace studied him as dread filled her. When she'd told him about skipping out on the river rafting trip, he'd looked at her with such hatred, she'd been sure she wouldn't be able to breathe. Now, he was asking for an even more life-altering secret. "If I tell you, you're never going to look at me the same again."

Trevor pulled away from her, just enough so he could look her in the eyes. "That could never happen."

She gave him a look. "You can't kid a kidder, Trev. Trust me. Everything's going to change between us if you know what I am."

"That whole thing about you being sick when you were fifteen?"

Grace bobbed her head once. "It's all tied in. It's the same reason I was worried about getting pregnant when most of the girls my age wouldn't have thought twice about taking a chance."

Trevor sighed. "I can't do anything about when we were kids, but I need you to trust me if we're going to get out of here. I need you to tell me whatever it is that you've been hiding for the last fifteen years."

She grabbed hold of his robes in her hands. She still wasn't at full strength, but she needed him to know just how serious this was. "Trevor, if there are blood samples, rags, anything like that, they need to be burned. All evidence that I was ever here—"

"I'll get Jacob and Nicole on that, but first, what's with all the secrecy?"

Grace felt almost nauseated as she tried to gather the courage to spill her secret. "This is going to sound delusional. Maybe even a little self-aggrandizing."

Trevor laughed and kissed her forehead. "You. Self-aggrandizing. This, I've got to see."

Grace pulled away so she could stare him in the eyes. "This isn't a joke, Trevor. This is my life we're talking about."

Trevor's eyes grew deadly serious. "I think you underestimate how much I value your life, Grace."

She exhaled slowly. "Fine. The DNA blood tests I took when I was thirteen confirmed that I belonged to the same race as a little girl my parents rescued their first year."

Trevor stiffened. "Excuse me?"

"She had been believed to be the last survivor of her people. They were wiped out by a plague."

Trevor raised an eyebrow. "And you had the same DNA?"

Grace nodded. "Yeah. We have a lot of theories, but so far we haven't gotten any real answers to why that's happened. All we knew was that around the age of fifteen, these people had a sickness that came. It gave the people powers, but it could be fatal, too."

Trevor raised a hand. "Wait. You said you were kidnapped at thirteen."

"That's when we discovered the DNA connection, but in a way I'd had powers before I ever got sick."

Trevor quirked his head to the side. "You have powers? Like Jacob's?"

Grace's head ached and everything started swimming. "It's complicated. I got sick when I was fifteen. Right on schedule. Because of the two years we'd known about the connection, we were prepared. I didn't get nearly as sick as the girl they'd rescued earlier."

Trevor pressed a hand to his head as if he also had the beginnings of a headache. "Grace, you're rambling. Bottom line this for me, please?"

Grace pulled away as a batch of tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. "I could read your mind back there on the ridge. Just for a split second, and honestly, it kind of freaked me out because I've never been able to do that before."

Trevor let go of her, pulled so far away from her that she nearly fell. "What are you saying?"

Grace's heart broke as she watched her worst nightmare unfold before her eyes. But the only way out was through, and so she stabilized herself again. "As far as my parents and I can tell, I'm not from this planet. Frankly, I'm probably even the result of goa'uld genetic manipulation... Maybe even a missing step on the evolutionary path between the Ancients in their human form and their ascended form."

Any expression of sympathy or empathy grew overshadowed by disbelief and confusion. "I dated an alien in high school?"

Grace rolled her eyes. "Of course that's where your brain would go."

Trevor reached for her, instantly apologetic. "No, Grace, I didn't mean—"

She shrugged off his touch, certain that the only reason he was reaching out to her was out of some obligation. "Don't, Trevor. Look, it's fine. I just need to be alone right now, okay?"

The look he gave her made her heart crack even further, a mix of helplessness, confusion, and longing. "Grace, please, just—"

She raised a finger. "Stop. Just go."

Her vision swam as she lay back down onto the cot, turned to her side, and let the tears come.

Her parents had always tried to be positive when it came to how her life would turn out. That she'd have the same opportunities for love and meaning they'd had.

The look in Trevor's eyes just then, though not what she might have called disgusted, had done more to shatter her illusions than anything she'd ever known. She'd never been more disappointed to be right in all her life.

And that was the guy who worked for the Stargate program...

For the first time since she'd been adopted twenty-two years ago, she felt utterly and totally alone.

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

Grace wiped at her eyes, trying to hold back her tears. She bit her lip as she took a shuddering breath. "I'm fine, Jacob. Just leave me alone, okay?"

Jacob sat beside her on the cot. "Hey, what's going on?"

She turned to him, unable to hide her emotions from her brother for much longer. "You might have been right about kissing Trevor back there. It was a bad idea."

Jacob's face held no pleasure as he squeezed her shoulder. "For what it's worth, I wish I'd been wrong."

Grace just swallowed as she used the pads of her fingertips to dry her tears. "How are you?"

He gave her the same shrug their dad usually gave when he tried to pretend nothing was bothering him. "Fine. I'm not the one who almost died, though."

Grace frowned at him. "I know you too well for you to get away with that. What's going on?"

Jacob just patted her hand. "Nothing any of us can do anything about. What do you say we just go home?"

Grace raised an eyebrow. "We can do that?"

Jacob revealed the small device he'd been tinkering with. "I can't replace the starter, but hopefully this will help bypass the system and get the car moving again. All we have to do is get out of here before they find the stargate, and we won't change history."

Grace rested the back of her head against the pillow. "Thank heavens for small mercies."

Jacob's smile was brittle. "Yeah, well, you weren't my only motivation for getting the hell out of here. Turns out I can be quite innovative when I want to avoid something."

Grace studied her brother a moment. He looked older. Tired. He may not have fought for his life like she had, but she suspected he'd been through his own share of difficulties in the last twenty-four hours. "Avoid something?"

Jacob offered her a placid smile, one that wasn't going to let her in on his troubles in a million years. "I'm gonna go install this. Then, all we have to do is figure out how we got here, and we can all go home."

Grace swallowed, wishing that she were in a hospital, for the simple fact that then she'd have a cup of water at her disposal. She shrugged off the discomfort. "I've actually been thinking about that. Do you remember when we were in the car? You said you wished we could go back and see how it all began, and I thought you meant Mom and Dad. You know, Mom in the Pentagon trying to make the Stargate program a reality. Dad on that first mission with Daniel, but I'm starting to suspect, you were thinking about this place all along."

Jacob grimaced. "Uh, it was just one of those things you say. One of those things you think once in a while."

Grace put her hand on his arm. "I'm not angry, Jacob. I mean, this technology could change everything."

Jacob rolled his eyes. "Mom would put the kibosh on it in a heartbeat."

Grace's brow furrowed. Every now and then, Jacob said these things about their mom... Things that always sounded a little antagonistic for Grace's tastes. Sure, she wasn't perfect, but there was something almost defensive about Jacob when he talked about their mom as an inventor. It hadn't seemed like a big deal, but seeing the look in his eye made Grace wonder if she'd read the situation wrong all these years. "Look, I get it. It's hard when you don't get to do the thing you feel you were born to do, but do you really want the entire world to be able to travel through time? To make over the world with one false step?"

"Of course not, and that was an accidental byproduct of the device's true function. Transportation, pure and simple."

Grace grinned. "Then, good news. I don't think Mom's going to have a single problem with this technology as long as the only thing you're able to do with it is teleportation. In fact, she might even be grateful. With this technology, Mom and Dad could live at the cabin, and Mom wouldn't have to give up her job. I can't imagine a thing that would make either of them happier."

Jacob's lips mechanically lifted, like he knew she expected him to be happy about the development. "I should really get to work. The longer we're here, the greater the chance we wipe ourselves from existence, or whatever."

Grace raised herself onto one elbow and grabbed his hand. "Jacob."

He looked at the floor, even though he didn't actually pull away.

"This breakthrough is incredible. You should be very proud."

He sighed. "It was an accident, Grace. That isn't greatness. Just proof again that I screwed up. Like all those scientists Mom just loves at Cheyenne Mountain."

She didn't know what to say as he finally stood and walked out the door, tossing the little metal object in the palm of his hand before he tucked it under his robes.

Grace closed her eyes as she dropped her head back to the pillows. Just get us home. We can fix everything else. Just let us go home so we can try.