Nearly there everyone!
If you want to read the whole (so far) version, along with a lot of corrections - http://www.randomleaves.com/allcrisis.html
*
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*
Okay, let's not panic, she ordered herself, resisting the urge to scratch maniacally at the back of her neck.
There was a Goa'uld in the room somewhere. Which Goa'uld was it? Mut or Frakes? And just what exactly was it planning? To kill her? If that was so, why hadn't it done it already? Whipped out a zat in the darkness and shot her twice. It could pinpoint her location far easier than she could pinpoint its location.
"Who's there?" she asked.
No response.
She wasn't really very surprised.
Her ears were listening so intently for any sound that she was able to hear the blood rushing through her body. Focussing beyond her body, she sought for any kind of movement, any kind of sound. Breathing, cloth rustling, hair moving. Anything.
Click.
That was something. Small, insignificant sounding. But definitely a noise she wasn't aware had happened before.
And it was several feet to her left.
Click.
Shit. Closer now. Or was she imagining things?
Adrenaline pumped in her body, the roar of her body ordering her into fight or flight mode. She moved one shoe into her other hand, gripping the toes tightly, raising them both. The heels were thin and high and with the right force and accuracy they would entirely make up for the fact that they had been agony to wear.
Click.
It was somewhere on her left for definite and either it was getting louder or someone, or something, was there. Her head turned, searching the darkness for any movement at all. The darkness had made her painfully vulnerable and each moment that passed she expected something to appear, something to suddenly shove it's face in front of hers...
She waited.
No fourth 'click' was forthcoming. That fact made her indescribably nervous.
Sam had a really bizarre urge to start singing something inane.
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer...
"Ms Clorel. So glad you could come."
She jumped; she couldn't help it. Only sheer willpower stopped her from screaming her head off. The voice was right by her head. She spun around to try and find it but she couldn't seem to focus on any human-like shape in the darkness at all.
"Where are you?"
"There is a open door to your right. If you follow the wall you will walk straight through it."
Focusing intently on the voice, Sam tried to make out where it was coming from. It was clear as a bell, complete with the delicate foreign accent, the impeccable speech rhythms.
She could have sworn someone was in the room with her.
Dragging her hand along the wall, Sam followed her instructions, walking slowly. She knew she had to stall; she had to give Colonel O'Neill time to find her.
And she had complete faith in him finding her.
Until then, she needed to stall. She needed to get as much information out of the Goa'uld as possible. And she needed to stay alive.
After this, off-world missions were going to be a piece of cake.
Reaching out with her hand, she felt a difference in air temperature. Another room. She pushed a foot forward, tapping her toes against the floor and noting the different texture of the floor. It wasn't any lighter in the room, however, but just in case her eyes scoured the darkness, searching for anything that indicated windows or doors.
Click.
Shit!
"Continue along the right wall. You will come across an open door and a set of descending stairs."
Sam was sensing a pattern. The click had something to do with the voice, she was sure of it. And now that she thought about it, the noise was identical each time, the kind of sound that could only be produced by technology. Perhaps it was a telecom system. It had to be pretty sophisticated to produce that kind of quality of sound, she thought. She reached up, touching the wall and ran her hand up and down. Almost immediately, her hand brushed over a rounded curve on the wall, rough with the wiry feel of meshing.
A speaker.
Click.
"Move. Now."
She felt the sound leave the speaker, felt the air on her fingertips.
There had to be a video camera on her, too. Probably with heat sensors or motion detectors. Where the hell was she? She'd taken the building to be a derelict apartment block but judging from the equipment in here it had been really done up to certain technical specifications. And if she knew anything about technology it was that the equipment installed was expensive. There was no way the restaurant could finance this.
Slowly, Sam edged herself along the wall.
*
"The fact of the matter is, Captain, that you defied direct orders." Hammond raised his eyebrows at her. "The orders of Colonel Makepeace, a superior officer."
Sam didn't wince, she didn't betray any kind of reaction to this statement. Partially because it was true and partially because she wanted to see where the General was going with this.
"I'm not going to report you. Otherwise both Colonel O'Neill and Colonel Makepeace would be in this office with me. As it is, Colonel Makepeace isn't going to state it in his report."
Sam felt her mouth open slightly, her lips parting in surprise. "That's very generous of him, sir."
Hammond smiled in a way that suggested to Sam that it had not been Makepeace's doing. She had wondered what that dirty look she'd received from the Marine that morning had been about.
She guessed this was it.
"Very generous, Captain," Hammond said dryly. "Since the outcome of you disobeying direct orders was the rescue of Colonel O'Neill and the death of Hathor, you can count yourself lucky. I suppose I needn't point out that you're not to do it again?"
Since she had no intention of taking orders from anyone but Colonel O'Neill and the General himself, Sam could nod and respond with the utmost truthfulness, "No, sir. There's no need for that."
*
Sam wondered what had happened to Makepeace. She presumed he'd been prosecuted after being caught as a spy for NID - but when had he started working for Maybourne?
Was she a fool for believing she needed to keep Maybourne in the loop? Maybourne had screwed with the SGC on so many damn occasions; did he deserve her strange loyalty? Was the Colonel right?
Maybourne hadn't been in contact with them, so as far as she knew she was carry out the mission without him knowing that they were close to completing it. And if she lived through this - when she lived through this - was she going to screw Maybourne over without intending to?
Should she care?
That stray thought kept Sam entertained as she sought for the descending staircase, careful in case she tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. The Colonel would be really pissed off if she broke her neck.
When her foot sunk through nothing, she hurriedly pulled it back. In front of her, down in front of her, she supposed, was the staircase. There had to be some kind of a railing. She reached out with her hands, creeping very marginally closer to where her foot had missed its step. Her right hand connected with something smooth, cool and solid. Tapping her short nails on it, she judged it to be metal. A metal railing..
Sam had a bizarre image of a gold railing á la Goa'uld architecture and she brushed the idea away as she gripped a hold of it and tentatively began stepping down.
Damn, she hadn't thought to ask Jerry if the microphone he'd so thoroughly attached to her bra worked underground. Her mind wasn't on the job. This plan was just going from disaster to disaster, which, she supposed, had something to do with her own attitude towards it. She hadn't really been acting like Major Carter the past couple of weeks, being more concerned with her own welfare and rescuing her battered relationship with her CO. Even taking that relationship far further than she'd ever thought possible in their working parameters.
The tingling began on the back of her neck and Sam came to a complete halt, turning around to search for movement. She wasn't making this up - there was a Goa'uld around somewhere. Somewhere nearby - not close enough for her skin to crawl, but near enough for her to be aware of it. It didn't have to be a Goa'uld, it could be a Jaffa, she supposed. But that begged the question - where would the larval Goa'uld have come from?
Maybourne had a lot to answer for.
If she ever saw him again.
Don't think like that.
She kept going, her senses on alert. What the hell did Mut want, anyway? If she wanted Sam dead, why hadn't she already done it? When she was vulnerable in the darkness. When a bullet through her head would put an end to any problems she might be capable of causing.
The only other option, one she had come to expect from the Goa'uld, was that she would be a useful source of information. The memories of Jolinar, hazy as they were -
*
Sam sat up in a rush, climbed out of her bed with the breathlessness of one escaping a nightmare. Halfway to the bathroom, she stopped and thought for a moment over what she had just dreamt.
Nothing she had ever experienced could have provided her subconscious with those images.
Legs going weak, Sam sank down to the floor.
Four weeks after her possession by an alien, three weeks after her first, and last, therapy session with Dr Mackenzie, one week after her return from duty, and Sam had dreams about an alien planet she hadn't visited.
Great.
Just... great.
Stumbling into her bathroom, she ran the water and contemplated sticking her head straight into the sink for a few minutes. In the end, all she did was splash her face a couple of times and look at her terrible reflection.
She needed new pajamas.
*
- would be a useful tool for any up-and-coming Goa'uld.
However, this Goa'uld didn't know that Jolinar was a Tok'ra. Most likely Mut didn't know the Tok'ra existed - goodness knew how long she'd been trapped in that jar until NID released her on the general population. Mut also didn't know anything about Sam's experiences - Sam Clorel, that is.
For all Mut knew, Sam was a completely oblivious bystander. A bystander who had been host to a Goa'uld, in, presumably, a blending that had failed. If Sam kept up the act properly, she would be of no use to Mut whatsoever. The fact that she had met Daniel Frakes before could be one huge coincidence.
But if she was of no use to the Goa'uld, then Mut had done this for nothing. And Sam had a pretty good idea what a disgruntled Goa'uld would do to a useless person.
Unfortunately for Sam, the set of stairs came to an end. Reaching out with her hands, all she could feel around her were surfaces. Walls, prickly with raised bumps, and the smoother surfaces of varnished wooden surfaces, doors maybe. She sought for a handle, somewhere, even pushed at the two doors but nothing moved, nothing budged.
The prickling began in earnest again and she hunched her shoulders - it certainly felt like there was a Goa'uld in the room with her but she could easily just be projecting.
Click.
"Stay where you are."
Stay where she...
"Ah!" she yelped as suddenly all around her the ground began to move. Leaning against the wall, Sam turned her head around. She was going down, she felt sure of it. Above her she could hear the smooth sound of supporting wire ropes moving, the whoosh of air passing. Moving and moving fast.
Where the hell was she going?
The stop was abrupt and jogged Sam back against the wall. She pushed herself to standing quickly, afraid that she would need to defend herself.
Nothing happened.
"Well, that's an anticlimax," she announced to anyone that was listening.
No one was, certainly no one willing to respond to her cliché.
She reached out again, pressing against the door on her immediate left. Nothing. Carefully walking across the small space to where the foot of the staircase had been, Sam waved her arms out in the air. Nothing greeted her but air. A stray thought that there was probably a very fatal drop in that direction wafted through Sam's mind and she swallowed.
Click.
"Continue forward."
Oh, there was no way...
"Now!"
Grimacing, Sam reached out with her foot. She could feel cold stone beneath her stockinged toes, solid stone. Hopping forward cautiously, she felt the temperature change again, just slightly. How far underground had they gone? She knew a lot of the buildings in the area had underground parking lots and underground storage, perhaps Mut had the building transformed to suit her security needs.
Still, it would have been expensive. Where had she gotten the money from?
Click.
"Stand still."
Sam did as she was told. She was completely in Mut's hands and no doubt the Goa'uld was enjoying herself immensely. With any luck, Sam could stay alive a little longer while Mut gloated. And she hadn't met a snake yet who didn't gloat. Even the Tok'ra were in to a bit of superior acting.
With a great thunk of noise, suddenly, the area in which Sam was standing was completely illuminated.
Sam had to admire the tactic; she was just as blind as she had been in the dark, but now she was terrifyingly exposed.